


I 


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PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, 



AND 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 



BT 



CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D. 



NEW^YORK : 

SAMUEL COLMAN, No. 114 FULTON-STREET, 
1838. 






Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by 

Samuel Colman, 

In the Oierk*3 Office of the District Court of the United Statea, for the 

Southern District of New- York. 



G. F. Hopkins & Son, Printer* 



EXTRACTS 

From the minutes of the New-York Phrenological Society, April 4, 
1838. 

Resolved, that we have heard with much pleasure of the arrival 
in this City of Professor Charles Caldwellj the accomplished ex- 
pounder and able defender of Phrenological Science, and that we 
respectfully invite him to deliver a Course of Lectures on that 
subject before this Society and our fellow-citizens generally. 

Resolved, that we have also heard with like satisfaction that 
Doctor Caldwell has prepared a reply to two published Lectures 
of Doctor Sewall, and to other antiphrenologists, and that we re- 
spectfully solicit of him the manuscript of the same for publi- 
cation. 

Resolved, that a committee of five be appointed from this Society 
to convey to Professor Caldwell the foregoing resolutions, and to 
express to him, in behalf of this Society, the high respect we en- 
tertain for him as a gentleman, a scholar, and a phrenologist. 

Resolved, that a committee of three from this Society be appoint- 
ed to superintend the publication of the before-mentioned manu- 
script, and to make suitable arrangements for the delivery of th« 
proposed Course of Lectures. 

JOHN B. SCOTT, President. 
LORING D. CHAPIN, Sect'y. 



PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 



In the heading of this essay, the term " unmasked " 
is used under the entire extent and strength of its signi- 
fication. It embraces in its meaning the detection, in 
the work of an antiphrenologist, of plagiarism, literary 
garbling and perverted quotation, fabricated charges, of- 
fensive and groundless, against Phrenology and its ad- 
vocates, and other gross misrepresentations deliberately 
made for the purposes of deception. It embraces in 
fact the exposure of a long and multifarious catalogue 
of studied, artful, and culpable devices, expressly de- 
signed by an antiphrenological writer for the suppres- 
sion of truth, the support, continuance, and propagation 
of error, and the enhancement of his own spurious pre- 
tension to talent and power in controversy, as well as to 
science and letters. To add to the demerit and of- 
fensiveness of the whole, these faults are committed 
under the show of a puritanical uprightness and can- 
dour of intention, and of great extent and accuracy of 
research. Hypocrisy therefore mingles in the aggre- 
gate, and increases at once its amount and disrepute. 
1* 



6 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

Is any one inclined to remark, that these are charges 
weighty in themselves^ and of serious import ; and that 
therefore they ought not to be preferred, without grave 
reflection, and a full conviction that they are founded in 
truth ? My reply is brief. I am aware of all this, have 
carefully weighed my responsibility in the matter, and 
strictly conformed to the requirement just expressed. I 
not only know that the charges are weighty ; my design 
has been to make them so, and to render them produc- 
tive of corresponding effects. And some of these effects 
are, not only to sustain truth, but to imprint an indelible 
brand of disrespect on a pamphleteer, who has delibe- 
rately conspired to suppress it. I have of course reflected 
on the charges dispassionately and gravely, and am pre- 
pared to support them by incontestable proof. And a 
large proportion of that proof will consist of extracts and 
fair inferences from the work, against which my char- 
ges are directed. 

Is any reader moved by the solemnity of this exor- 
dium to inquire, who is the antiphrenologist here re- 
ferred to 1 and what the character of the work he has 
written ? To these questions, the answer will be found 
in the following title page. 

"An examination of Phrenology ; in two lectures, 
delivered to the students of the Columbian College, Dis- 
trict of Columbia, February, 1837. By Thomas Sew- 
all, M. D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, 
Published by request." 

Such is the production, so thickly studded with literary 
faults, and so deeply merged in moral delinquencies, 
which it is my purpose to make the subject of a criti- 
cal examination. And should I in the course of it ex-* 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 7 

press myself in language so plain and strong as to be 
exceptionable to the author, I have no apology to offer 
for the offence, nor any but one explanation to give 
him ; and for that he is referred to the contents and 
character of his own pamphlet. That production mer- 
its all the severity I shall exercise toward it. Though 
it will be treated however unceremoniously, it shall 
not be treated unjustly. While no imaginary faults 
will be imputed to it, those which mark it shall be call- 
ed by their proper names, provided such names be not 
deemed offensive to the ear of delicacy, or to cultiva- 
ted taste. That some of the terms and expressions em- 
ployed will be stern and condemnatory, is not to be 
doubted ; because, consistently with fitness, they cannot 
be otherwise. I may not, and will not attempt the lan- 
guage and manner of the " Athenian bee ;' ? because they 
do not suit my mood, and would not be appropriate to 
my subject. Though I shall not studiedly embitter my 
pen, neither shall I dip it unnecessarily in the dews of 
Hymettus. When detected in the pamphlet, falsehood 
and deception, rank plagiarism and affected learning, 
shall be correctly denominated, and censured as they 
deserve. Nor shall feebleness of authorship, bloated 
pretension, or blank ignorance be passed unnoticed. 
As far as my time and resources may avail, the publica- 
tion I am examining shall be spoken of in strict ac- 
cordance with its character. My language must if 
practicable be suited to my theme. Foul looking ob- 
jects cannot be painted in rain-bow beauty. Nor can 
things that merit reprobation and rebuke be correctly 
represented in suavity of tone> and blandness of 
expression. 



8 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, ANB 

That the two lectures, as stated in the title page, were 
delivered in Washington, in February 1837, is proba- 
bly true. They were not however then delivered for 
the first time. Two or three lectures to the same 
purport were delivered by Dr. Sewall in 1825 or '26 ; 
and whatever changes may have been since made in 
their style and manner, it is presumable that they were, 
in substance and tenor, somewhat the same with those 
which he has recently passed through the press. I re- 
ceived indeed at the time a confident assurance that 
such was the fact. True ; he has no doubt during the 
whole interval been gravely pondering Phrenology, or 
rather the objections that may be fancied and fabricated 
against it, by hostile sciolists in it, and patiently incuba- 
ting fresh matter, for the purpose of enriching and im- 
proving his discourses. We are authorized therefore 
to suppose, that he considers those discourses now ma- 
ture and perfect — well calculated to dispel error, or 
what he miscalls so, diffuse the misguiding phantom- 
light which he loves, and give him a place among the 
"mighty reformers and conservatives" of the age — per- 
chance even a niche in the " Temple of Fame," by the 
side of the Stagirite, to whose authority he refers, with- 
out, I venture to say, having ever perused a single chap- 
ter of that philosopher's writings. That such is his am- 
bition, if not his opinion, may be fairly inferred from a 
clause near the beginning of his second lecture, p. 35, 
in which he virtually disparages his predecessors and 
contemporaries in antiphrenology, by asserting that 
they have used only such " arguments " against the sci- 
ence, as "have too often been evaded" by their antag- 
onists, and that by the "methods of investigation," pursu> 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 9 

ed by them, " the public mind has not been enlightened, 
as to the real merits of Phrenology." From these ex- 
pressions, I say, taken in connexion with what just pre- 
cedes them, I am justified in alleging, that he considers 
all other antiphrenologists as inefficient assailants, and 
himself the Hercules commissioned, and every way fit- 
ted, to destroy the Hydra of error, engendered in the 
brains of Gall and Spurzheim, whom, in imitation of his 
well-bred brethren in abuse, he designates by the cour- 
teous appellation of the "German Doctors." 

Be his opinion on this topic however what it may, it 
is obvious that he has aimed at Prenology the deadliest 
blow he is capable of inflicting. But mighty as was his 
effort, in his own estimation, it will be presently made 
appear, that, not only has he wasted it in air ; but that 
in reality it is as puny and unskilful, as it is ostentatious 
and laboured. It is essentially a piece of internal vapour- 
ing, under a subdued and calm exterior. And if I do 
not prove it so, I shall submit, without a murmur,, to 
the mortifying appellation of a vapour er myself. 

As already mentioned, Dr. SewalPs two lectures, con- 
sisting ©f only seventy pages, very sparsely printed, were 
conceived about the year 1825 or 1826. Ever since that 
period, the Professor has been in protracted, and no 
doubt painful gestation and parturition of them ; and 
his safe delivery is but of recent date. What less then 
could he expect of them, than that they would issue 
from the travail of his aching brain, like Minerva from 
the brain of the ruler of Olympus, adult in stature, full 
fraught with wisdom, " clad all in steel," and prepared 
for the highest and deadliest doings ! And how misera- 
ble must be the disappointment, and how piteous the 



10 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

condition of the doating parent, when he shall find (as 
find he must,) that, instead of giving birth to a paragon 
of wisdom and war, he has incurred the " sharp-tooth- 
ed " sarcasm of the satirist; "Monies parluriwit, et 
mifs ridiculus nascitur I " And the mouse shall be forth 
coming. But to drop the language of metaphor, and 
resort to that of sober narrative. 

In the summer I think of 1824, a brief course of lec- 
tures on Phrenology was delivered in the city of Wash- 
ington, and immediately on its close, a Phrenological 
Society established. Of that society I believe, but am 
not confident, that Dr. Sewall was a member. I am 
confident however that he expressed himself favourably 
toward the science — but whether sincerely or dissem- 
blingly, subsequent occurrences rendered doubtful. 
About a year and and a half afterward (I think in the 
spring of 1826) another course of Phrenological lec- 
tures was delivered in Washington, by invitation of the 
society, and under its sanction. That course Professor 
Sewall attended, under the semblance of entire friend- 
liness to the doctrines taught in it. About the termina- 
tion of the course, or shortly afterward, a slight event 
fell out, in no shape connected with either Phrenology, 
or any other branch of science, at which the Professor 
took offence. That offence was pointed at first toward 
the lecturer. Like other forms of flame and fiery me- 
teors, however, it was probably forked; and while one 
streak of it fastened on the deliverer of the lectures, the 
other passed by him, or diverged from him, and made 
war on the science which he had taught. And that war 
is still raging ; and the two lectures recently published, 
and now before me, are but a brace of the thunderbolts 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 11 

the Professor has been forging, during the last twelve 
or thirteen years, for the demolition of heresy. 

Be this an accurate representation of the chain of 
cause and effect or not, it is certainly true, that soon 
after the time of the offence referred to, Professor 
Sewall delivered to a class (but what class I know 
not) two or three lectures in opposition to Phrenology. 
But though I do not know of whom the Professor's 
class did, I w r ell know of whom it did no/, consist. Not 
a member of the Washington Phrenological Society be- 
longed to it. As I have been informed, and believe to 
be true, not a member of the society was even apprized 
of the Doctor's intention to lecture on Phrenology, un- 
til after he had already done so. Nor did any one of 
them consider him competent to the task. 

Not satisfied with the clandestine course Professor 
Sewall had thus pursued, for the purpose of discrediting 
the science in the estimation of those who had no 
knowledge of it, the Phrenological Society requested, 
and even challenged him, to redeliver his lectures, and 
allow the members of the society to make a part of his 
audience. With this request or challenge he promised 
to comply, and I think appointed the hour of meeting. 
His engagement, however, was violated — perhaps more 
than once. The lectures were not redelivered. The 
members of the society, dissatisfied at being thus sported 
with, and deeming Professor SewalPs whole conduct in 
the matter unbecoming and exceptionable, took imme- 
diate action on it, and published their proceedings, 
which contained somewhat of the statement I have here 
repeated. A copy of the publication was transmitted 
to myself. Unfortunately, however, I have lost or mis- 



12 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

laid it, and have not a distinct recollection of all its par- 
ticulars. But I well recollect that it was neither res- 
pectful toward Dr. Sewall, nor creditable to him. I 
think I may add, that it chagrined and mortified him. 

If I have done the doctor injustice in this narrative, it 
is unintentional. And if I have been in anything incor- 
rect, I doubt not that a copy of the proceedings of the 
Washington Phrenological Society referred to, can be 
found ; and that will furnish the narrative accurately. 
How far the offence unintentionally given to Dr. Sewall, 
(for it was unintentionally given) has been instrumental 
in rendering him hostile to Phrenology, I pretend not to 
know. Nor, unversed as I am in casuistry of the 
kind, shall I take any concern in the solution of the 
problem. From the circumstances of the case, one 
of two points appears certain. The doctor was dis- 
trustful of either the solidity of the cause he had 
espoused, or of his own ability to handle it ; else he 
would not have withheld from the members of the 
Phrenological Society, many of whom were his fellow 
practitioners of medicine, and all of them his neighbours 
and acquaintances, the privilege and gratification of 
listening to his lectures. There appears to have been 
something unsound at the fountain-head of his antiphre- 
nological career ; and, as was to be expected, that taint 
has more or less polluted the entire stream. 

From the year 1826 until the summer of 1837, eleven 
long years, it was my fortune, good or bad as the case 
may turn out, to be an entire stranger to the movements 
of Professor Sewall, in his favourite enterprise of erecting 
barricadoes, to protect the world from the heresies of 
Phrenology. And even after possessing myself of the 



ANTIPARENOLOGY UNMASKED. 13 

two lectures I am now examining, (the first fruits of his 
love and labours) I allowed many months to pass away, 
(believing my other engagements of higher importance) 
before doing more than hastily glancing my eye over 
them. Nor should I ever have turned to the pages of 
them again, so trivial and commonplace, false and 
trashy did I find them, had I not been given to under- 
stand, that, by many people, they were differently esti- 
mated ; and that, among persons unqualified to judge 
of them, they were exciting prejudices against Phre- 
nology. Such are the reasons why I did not commence 
the present scrutiny at an early period; and, having 
commenced it, I have motives sufficient to induce me 
to make it as severe and definitive, as truth will authorize, 
and my time and other resources will admit. 

As far as industry and labour may be deemed virtues, 
(and they are highly valuable ones, when applied, from 
correct motives, to correct purposes) Professor Sewall 
is entitled to praise. I know not when I have looked 
through seventy octavo pages more toilsomely thrown 
together, or exhibiting marks of more apparently exten- 
sive reading and research by their author, than the 
Professor's " Two Lectures." I say " apparently exten- 
sive " — not really so ; for I am convinced that the 
writer has read himself but few of the works to which 
he has referred. His knowledge of them is derived 
from second-hand sources. Still however, scanty as 
I believe his original research to have been, did his 
lectures contain evidence of a corresponding amount of 
candour, judgment and talent, they would be a pro- 
duction of some merit. But in these attributes they 
are deplorably wanting. Morally considered, they are 

2 



14 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

a mass of falsehood, spurious pretension, and studied 
artiiice, thrown together for selfish and other unbecom* 
ing purposes. In an intellectual point of view, they 
are a caput mortuum — a body without a soul — a bloated 
aggregation of garbled and perverted matter, assorted 
and arranged without either judgment or genius, tact 
or scholarship. From beginning to end, they do not 
contain a mark of profundity, or an original thought. 
Their objections to Phrenology, instead of being new, 
as their author professes them to be, are nearly as old 
as the science itself. They are among the very first 
that were contrived and presented by the antiphrenolo- 
gists of Europe and America. And since their first 
conception, they have been repeated and re-repeated, 
confuted and re-confuted, until they have contracted the 
staleness of a ten-times-told tale. For they have been 
literally told and refuted, more, I doubt not, than fifty 
times. If Professor Sewall does not know this, he is 
more ignorant of the history of Phrenology than I have 
supposed him to be ; and infinitely more so than, as a 
lecturer and a writer on it, he ought to be. And if he 
does know it, I leave to others to judge of his motive in 
bringing again before the public such miserably vapid 
and time-battered commonplace. To pass by other 
and higher causes, self respect alone should have re- 
strained him from thus exposing himself, clad but in the 
tattered cast-clothes of his predecessors. 

For full information on all these points, if indeed be 
is deficient in it, and desirous of attaining it, he is refer- 
red to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, the wri- 
tings of Gall, Spurzheim, and the two Combes, and the 
Edingburgh Phrenological Journal, from its commence- 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 15 

ment to the present time, and he will be satisfied. He 
will there find every objection to Phrenology contained 
in his " Two Lectures," together with substantial and 
conclusive replies to them ; and several others of equal 
validity, and equally refuted, which have not perhaps 
occurred to him — I should rather say, which he has not 
seen. For I verily believe that none of Dr. SewalPs 
objections are his own. He has too little originality of 
mind to conceive and frame them himself. He has 
collected them from books, and done them up into lec- 
tures, not to dissipate error from the minds of Phrenolo- 
gists ; but to plant or perpetuate error in the minds of 
those who are ignorant of Phrenology. 

In 1826 he did not, as already mentioned, lecture to 
Phrenologists. He refused to lecture to them even when 
invited and challenged to that effect. It is far from being 
probable, therefore, that he delivered to Phrenologists 
his " Two Leetures," in February, 1837. He delivered 
them to college youths, who, it is presumable, were 
strangers to the science. Nor has he published them 
for Phrenologists ; but for those whom he wishes to 
keep blind to the true knowledge of Phrenology ; and 
with whom he is solicitous to acquire popularity, and build 
up a reputation for science and learning — perchance 
also to increase among them his professional business. 
Dr. Sewall would not dare to deliver his " Two Lectures " 
to a phrenological audience* He knows too well the 
reception^he would encounter. Nor, I venture to say, 
has he presented a copy of his " Lectures" to any Phre- 
nologist in either Europe or America. He is apprized 
that the act would bring down on him ridicule — not to 
say a harsher feeling, and a heavier infliction. I am 
told, however, that he has circulated his pamphlet to no 



16 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

small extent among those who are already immersed in 
ignorance or error respecting the science. And the 
report is no doubt correct. I shall only add, under this 
head, that it would have been well for the reputation 
and standing of the Professor, had no Phrenologist ever 
opened his pamphlet. But to proceed to an analysis 
of his " Two Lectures ;" and establish against them the 
truth of the changes, preferred in the second paragraph 
of my essay. And first, of 

" Plagiarism, Literary Garbling, and Perverted 
Quotation." 

A large portion of Lecture I. is taken verbatim? with- 
out acknowledgment, and therefore by plagiarism, from 
two works. The first of these is the " Biography of 
Dr. Gall," prefixed to the Boston edition of his works, 
translated into English by Winslow Lewis, M. D. &c. 
and edited by Nahum Capen, Esq. It is some of the 
matter of this production in particular, that Dr. Sewall 
has garbled, changed, and perverted, the better to ac- 
commodate it to his purposes of deception. The second 
work on which he has played the plagiarist, and garbled 
deeply, but without, I believe, making any perversion of 
its meaning, is the " Elements of Phrenology," pub- 
lished by myself, in 1827. Proof of these charges shall 
now be produced. In " Lecture I." when speaking of 
the early years of Dr. Gall, Dr. Sewall says : 

" His (Dr. Gall's) attention was at first drawn to this 
subject (the conformation of the cranium) by observing, 
while quite a youth, that each of his brothers and sis- 
ters, his school fellows and companions in play, pos- 
sessed some peculiarity of talent or disposition, some 
aptitude or propensity, which distinguished them from 
others." ***** " Some amused themselves by 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 17 

cutting figures in wood, or drawing them on paper, in 
painting, or the cultivation of a garden ; while others 
abandoned themselves to the noisy games, or traversed 
the woods in pursuit of flowers, bird's nests, and but- 
terflies." ******* " Some were distinguished 
for the beauty of their penmanship, some for their suc- 
cess in arithmetic, others for the talent of acquiring a 
knowledge of natural history and languages. The 
composition of one was remarkable for elegance, while 
the style of another v/as stiff and dry ; a third connected 
his reasoning in the closest manner, and clothed his ar- 
guments in the most forcible language." 

Sa much for the first and second pages of " Lecture 
I." Let us now turn to its prototype, the " Biography 
of Dr. Gall." 

" From an early age he (Dr. Gall) was given to 
observation, and was struck with the fact, that each of 
his brothers and sisters, companions in play, and school- 
fellows, possessed some peculiarity of talent or dispo- 
sition, which distinguished him from others. Some of 
his schoolmates were distinguished for the beauty of 
their penmanship, some by their success in arithmetic, 
and others by their talent for acquiring a knowledge ©f 
natural history, or of languages. The compositions of 
one were remarkable for elegance, while the style of 
another was stiff and dry ; and a third connected his 
reasonings in the closest manner* and clothed his ar- 
gument in the most forcible language." * * * * * * * 
44 Some cut figures in wood, or delineated them on 
paper ; some devoted their leisure to painting, or the 
cultivation of a garden, while their comrades abandoned 
themselves to noisy games, or traversed the woods to, 
2* 



18 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

gather flowers, seek for bird's nests, or catch butter- 
flies." 

Such are a few, and but a few, compared with the 
number that might be adduced, of Professor SewalPs 
acts of piracy committed on the " Biography of Dr. 
Gall. And it will be observed that, with a view to con- 
ceal those acts, he has garbled and transposed some of 
the passages, inserting between them a few words or 
lines of his own, or something drawn from other clauses 
of the " Biography," like mortar between bricks, to fill 
up the crevices. True ; the effort at concealment is 
a very shallow one ; resembling not a little that which 
the ostrich makes, by placing its head under a bramble, 
to escape from the hunter, its body and limbs remain- 
ing exposed. Still however it is an effort, and shows 
at once the studied trickery, and the puerile weakness 
of its author. He would have concealed his plagiarism 
and barrenness of intellect, had it been in his power. 
The worst however is to come. 

In relation to the passages just quoted, Dr. Sewall 
has acted without much disguise, and taken them as 
he found them. He has neither omitted any thing ma- 
terial in them, nor altered their meaning, to subserve 
sinister purposes, by palming on his hearers or readers 
artful misrepresentations or false constructions. Though 
he has shown much weakness therefore, and reprehen- 
sible unfairness in the proceeding, he can hardly be said 
to have committed treachery in it, or any other act of 
moral turpitude. But in the following case, his fault is 
far different in amount* and much darker in colour. 
Depravity alone could have led to its perpetration. 

"In 1808,." says he, Lect I, pp.. 8 -9, " Gall and 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 19 

Spurzheim presented a joint memoir, on the Anatomy 
and Physiology of the Brain, to the French Institute* 
which at that time was in full glory, and one of the first 
scientific societies in Europe. The chief of the ana- 
tomical department was M. Cuvier, and the first mem- 
ber of this learned body to whom Drs. Gall and Spurz- 
heim addressed themselves. He received the German 
Doctors with politeness, attended their lectures, and 
witnessed their dissections of the brain. 

* A committee was appointed by the Institute to re- 
port upon the memoir,|consisting of Tenon, Portal, 
Sabbatier, Pinel, and Cuvier; all men of known candour 
and ability. M. Cuvier drew up an elaborate report, 
containing within a short compass the whole substance 
of the memoir ; but while it was approved by the Insti- 
tute, it was not such as to satisfy Gall and Spurzheim, 
or to inspire confidence in their views of the anatomy 
and physiology of the brain. Some merit was awarded 
to them for their method of dissecting the brain, and for 
some other improvements they had made ; but many of 
the discoveries ivhich they claimed as original were 
traced to anatomists who had preceded them y and their 
main positions were regarded as extremely hypothetical. 
Such was the reception which Phrenology met with 
from the French Institute." 

Such is the account of this truckling manoeuvre (for 
that it was a piece of truckling will be presently made 
appear) of the Institute of France, given by Dr. Seivall. 
Let us now turn to it, in the pages of the " Biogra- 
phy," and see it there depicted as it was. 

" In 1808, they (Gall and Spurzheim,) presented a 
joint memoir on the anatomy of the brain, to the French 



20 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

Institute." ******** 
" The Institute was then in all its glory. In proportion 
as Buonaparte had cannonaded, it had grown enlight- 
ened. As the hero was the referendary of military justice, 
so was it the Areopagus of scientific truth. The chief 
of the anatomical department was M. Cuvier ; and he 
was the first member of this learned body to whom Drs, 
Gall and Spurzheim addressed themselves. 

" M. Cuvier was a man of known talents and acquire- 
ments, and his mind was applicable to many branches 
of science. But what equally distinguished him with 
the versality of his understanding, was the suppleness of 
his opinions. He received the German Doctors with 
much politeness. He requested them to dissect a brain 
privately for him and a few of his learned friends ; and 
he attended a course of lectures, given purposely for 
him and a party of his selection. He listened with 
much attention, and appeared well disposed toward the 
new doctrine ; and the writer of this article heard him 
express his approbation of its general features ,in a circle 
which was not particularly private. 

" About this time the Institute had committed an act 
of extraordinary courage, in venturing to ask permission 
of Buonaparte to award a prize medal to Sir H. Davy* 
for his admirable galvanic experiments, and was still 
in amazement at its own heroism. Consent was ob- 
tained ; but the soreness of national defeat rankled 
deeply within. When the First Consul was apprized 
that the greatest of his comparative anatomists had at- 
tended a course of lectures by Dr. Gall, he broke out 
as furiously as he had done against Lord Whitworth ; 
and at his levee berated the wise men of his land for 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 21 

allowing themselves to be taught chemistry by an Eng- 
lishman, and anatomy by a German ; sat. verbum. The 
wary citizen (Cuvier) altered his language. A com- 
mission was named by the Insiitute, to report upon the 
labours of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim ; M, Cuvier drew 
up this report. In this he used his efforts, not to pro- 
claim the truth, but to diminish the merits of the learned 
Germans. Whenever he could find the most distant 
similarity between the slightest point of their mode of 
operating, and anything done before, he dwelt upon it 
with peculiar pleasure ; and lightly touched upon what 
was really new. He even affected to excuse the Insti- 
tute for taking the subject into consideration at all t say- 
ing that the anatomical researches were entirely distinct 
from the physiology of the brain, and the doctrines of 
mental manifestations. Of this part of the subject, 
Buonaparte, and not without cause, had declared his 
reprobation; and Cuvier was too great a lover of liberty 
not to submit his opinion to that of his Consul. His 
assertion, too, that the anatomy of the brain has noth- 
ing to say to its mental influence, he knew to be in 
direct opposition to the fact ; but even the meagre 
credit which he did dare to allow to the new mode of 
dissection, he wished to dilute with as much bitterness 
as he could. So unjust and unsatisfactory, so lame 
and mutilated did the whole report appear, that the 
authors of the new method published an answer, in 
which they accused the committee of not having re- 
peated their experiments. Such was the reception 
which the science of Phrenology met with from the 
Academy of the great nation." 

§uch is the account given by Professor Sewall of the 



22 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED) AND 

proceedings of the French Institute, in relation to Drs. 
Gall and Spurzheim, and such the account contained 
in the " Biography" from which he immediately derived 
his information. And on the Professor's departure 
from truth and correct principles in the matter, no com- 
ment is necessary to expose its enormity. He has 
committed one of the deepest and most reprehensible 
of literary delinquencies. Not only has he been guilty 
of garbling and perversion, but of gross interpolation, 
and such an entire change in the sentiment and design 
of the work from which he has quoted, as to make it 
hold out views directly the opposite of what its author 
intended. Not only has he rejected from his garbled 
extract every expression favourable to Gall and Spurz- 
heim, which the "Biography" contains; he has, in 
disregard of truth, introduced an assertion of his own 
directly hostile to them. 

While Dr. Sewall pronouunces Cuvier a man " of 
known candour" the " Biography " declares him to have 
been " distinguished for the suppleness of his opinions." 
In plain terms, destitute of candour. And, in the case 
referred to, that " suppleness " was pre-eminent. That 
Cuvier's opinion had been friendly to the doctrines of 
Gall and Spurzheim, until a rebuke from the First Con- 
sul changed it, was no secret in Paris. In 1821, the 
Baron's summerset on that subject was there publicly 
spoken of, generally believed, and never contradicted. 
It was even openly asserted, that he had drawn up two 
reports on the memoir of the Phrenologists. Of these, 
the first contained a flattering approval of their doc- 
trines ; because he himself thought favourably of them; 
and the second a "supple" and submissive disappro- 



ANTIPttRENOLOGY UNMASKED* 23 

val ; because the First Consul thought unfavourably of 
them. And that was the only reason of their condem- 
nation by him. That Cuvier " was subsequently a 
Phrenologist," as far as he had informed himself in the 
science, his writings prove. But he never was fully 
and intimately informed in it ; because he never tho- 
roughly studied it. The engrossment of his mind by 
his own pursuits prevented him. And high-gifted and 
great as he was, nature did not make him a thorough- 
bred Phrenologist. Nor did he ever make himself so, 
by the requisite kind and extent of inquiries. To his 
sentiments of the science, therefore, much more defer- 
ence has been paid, and much more consequence at- 
tached, than they actually deserved. Respecting the 
entire merits of Phrenology, he was far from being a 
competent judge. A man of native powers vastly in- 
ferior to his, but who had made Phrenology a serious 
study, would be greatly his superior, in fitness to decide 
on its truth or falsehood. I shall only add, that, in the 
few last years of his life, Cuvier spoke openly of the 
truth and importance of Phrenology. He sent Gall 
when on his death-bed, a cranium which he deemed 
corroborative of the science. But the patriarchal Phre- 
nologist, not having yet forgotten the Baron's former 
"supple" act of unkindness and discountenance, reject- 
ed the peace-offering* and returned it to the Great Na- 
turalist, accompanied by a laconic and cutting message. 
Notwithstanding this, Cuvier, if I mistake not, was 
t>ne of the five, who pronounced eulogies over the 
grave of the illustrious German. As far as they may 
avail therefore, the writings, conversation, and actions 



24 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

of Cuvier testify to the truth and usefulness of Phre- 
nology, 

Again, says Professor Sewall, in the passage ex- 
tracted from " Lecture I. ; " " many of the discoveries 
which they (Gall and Spurzheim) claimed as original 
were traced to anatomists who had preceded them." Not 
only is this clause scandalously false ; it is a most dis- 
honourable interpolation. Of the assertion it makes, the 
work on which the Professor has so disgracefully pla- 
giarized, does not contain a single tittle in either letter 
or spirit — but virtually the reverse. The following 
strong and memorable passage appears in the extract 
just correctly made from that production. 

" M. Cuvier drew up this report (on the memoir of 
Gall and Spurzheim.) In this he used efforts, not to 
proclaim the truth, but to diminish the merits of the 
learned Germans. Whenever he could find the most 
distant similarity between the slightest point of their 
mode of operating, and any thing done before, he dwelt 
upon it with peculiar pleasure, and lightly touched upon 
what was new." * * * *. He moreover said, in posi- 
tive violation of truth, " that the anatomical researches 
(of the Phrenologists) were entirely distinct from the 
physiology of the brain, and the doctrines of mental 
manifestations." 

Thus was a course, not merely of deep injustice, but 
of virtual treachery, pursued toward Gall and Spurzheim, 
to injure and suppress their rising reputation, as anato- 
mists and philosophers. And for what purpose 1 — to 
soothe the jealousy of the savans of Paris, to appease 
the resentment of the First Consul of France, and to 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 25 

conciliate his favour toward an individual — And that 
individual was the first naturalist of the age ! The whole 
transaction was deeply discreditable to all who promo- 
ted or in any way countenanced it ; and on the charac- 
ter of the Baron Cuvier it has affixed a stain, which 
neither time nor circumstance can ever efface. It is 
not true, as Professor Sewall has asserted, that a single 
discovery, much less " many discoveries," claimed as 
original by Gall and Spurzheim, were " traced to anato- 
mists who had preceded them." What they claimed 
as original and their own, was original and their own ; 
and time and truth have sanctioned their claim. They 
were as really the discoverers of what is now consid- 
ered the true anatomy and physiology of the brain, as 
Harvey was of the circulation of the blood, Columbus 
of the New World, or Franklin of the identity of elec- 
tricity and lightning. And I fearlessly add, that their 
discovery was not only the more intricate ; but that it 
is destined to prove the more important of the four. 
Nor is this all. Were the present a suitable occasion 
to embark in the inquiry, it would be easy to show, that 
Galen, father Paul, Servetus, Csesalpinus, Fabriciug, 
and others, had, before the time of Harvey, done much 
more toward the discovery of the circulation of the 
blood, than had been done toward the discovery of 
Phrenology, by all the predecessors of Gall and Spurz- 
heim. The claim of the latter inquirers therefore to 
the title of discoverers, was in the same proportion less 
questionable than the claim of the former. And the 
paramount value of the contributions to science, made 
by the two illustrious Germans, is sufficiently clear from 
the following considerations. 
3 



26 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

Of the four great discoverers just mentioned, the dis- 
coveries of two, Columbus and Franklin, were confined 
to dead matter. Of Harvey, and Gall and Spurzheim, 
the discoveries related to living matter. These latter 
discoveries therefore were of the more elevated order ; 
because, as respects the affairs of our globe, the know- 
ledge of living is superior to that of dead matter. 
Of living matter again, some kinds bearing a higher 
rank than others, the knowledge of such kinds must be 
also higher. Nor will it be denied, that the cerebral 
system is of an order superior to the circulatory. But 
Harvey discovered only the anatomy and functions of 
the latter; while Gall and Spurzheim made a similar 
discovery in relation to the former. Hence, I repeat, 
the labours of the two Germans resulted in a more ele- 
vated and important contribution to the science of nature, 
than the labours of the Englishman. 

In one respect the fortunes of Havey, and those of 
Gall and Spurzheim were alike. Their discoveries 
were pronounced unfounded, and brought down on their 
authors not merely denunciation and abuse, but what 
was tantamount to persecution. This state of things 
however could not last ; because truth was destined ul- 
timately to prevail. And when it did at length prevail, 
and the soundness of the doctrines of the circulation 
and of phrenology could be no longer disputed consis- 
tently with any show of reason and science, conscience, 
and justice, robber-like efforts were set on foot, to de- 
prive the authors of the honours of their discoveries, by 
tracing and attributing them to some of their predeces- 
sors. To this work of piracy in science Dr. Sewall 
has lent himself. And in doing so, he has shown an 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 27 

equal degree of pomp and injustice, vanity and weak- 
ness. 

I mean the pomp and vanity of learning, which in 
reality Dr. Sewall does not possess. His learning in 
the present case, like his objections to phrenology, is 
altogether second-hand. He has not toiled for it, but 
has procured it as a chanty from those, who had pushed 
their researches after it to the fountain head. By far 
the greater portion of it is furnished to him by Gall and 
Spurzheim themselves. They have frankly referred to 
all writers of distinction, who, previously to themselves, 
had pronounced the brain to be a multiplex organ, and 
marked different regions of it as the seat of different 
operations of the mind. I say " operations ; " for none 
of those writers have even named, much less expound- 
ed, an original power or faculty of the mind. The rea- 
son is plain. They had no knowledge of those faculties. 
And herein consists the immense superiority of Gall 
and Spurzheim to all preceding mental philosophers. 
They have so analyzed the mind, as to indicate accu- 
rately its innate faculties, or original powers, together 
with the specific functions of each ; while other philo- 
sophers have spoken only of mental operations or forms 
of action. From the time of Aristotle to that of Dr. 
Brown, every philosopher who has attempted to instruct 
the world in the science of mind, has spoken only of 
perception, and memory, and understanding, and will, 
and judgment, and imagination, and attention, and as- 
sociation, and other forms of generalization and abstrac- 
tion, which are nothing but so many modes of action of 
the original faculties of the mind. But, so to analyze 
the mind, as to discover and describe those facul- 



28 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

ties, to specify their functions, and to point out the 
portions of the brain in which they are seated, and 
through the instrumentality of which they are mani- 
fested — these discoveries and achievements were re- 
served to immortalize the two philosophers of Germany, 
And they have immortalized them, and are mental pro- 
ducts of the highest order that have been exhibited by 
man. They are, indeed, too elevated or too profound, 
as the case may be, for Professor Sewall to reach and 
comprehend them. For his language, in various in- 
stances, shows that he does not comprehend them — or 
that he intentionally blunders, as often as he attempts 
to speak of them discriminatingly. Of all the mental 
efforts of the German phrenologists, their analysis of 
the mind, and their division of it into its primitive fa- 
culties, and pointing out the range of action of those 
faculties, is the most herculean. Their dissection of 
the brain, and their indication of the places of its nu- 
merous subordinate organs, though achievements pecu- 
liarly interesting and important, are far inferior, as in- 
tellectual exertions. But, to return, and bestow a part- 
ing gaze on the pyramid of learning, which Professor 
Sewall, in his overweening conceit, has erected to his 
own glory, by eleven or twelve tedious years of industry 
and toil. 

To collect the materiel of this ill-constructed pile of 
ostentation and conceit, he has commenced with Aris- 
totle, who he tells us learnt his letters and wrote his 
books more than three hundred years nearer to the 
birth-day of time, than the beginning of the christian 
era was ; travelled down through the domains of Galen* 
Bernard Gordon, Albert the Great, Archbishop of Ra- 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 29 

ttsbon, Peter de Montagnana, Michael Servetus, Lu- 
dovico Dolci, Jo. Baptists Porta?, and Dr. Thomas 
Willis; and lastly, through the "New Jerusalem" of 
that memorable crack-brain, the Baron Swedenborg ! 
With each of these shining personages the Professor 
maybe supposed to have spent some time in his travels ; 
for he gives what he no doubt considers quite an amus- 
ing account of their dates, places of abode, ranks in 
life, haps and mishaps, and other like domestic matters; 
and assures us, on the word of a man, that they were 
orthodox believers in the multiplex character of the brain. 
Now, to many people in the world, all this might have 
been as fresh and well savoured as the contents of the 
morning newspaper, had not the two M German Doctors " 
themselves been such communicative gossips, as to have 
told the same story at a prior period. For, with per- 
haps one or two omissions, they have told it distinctly* 
And, to speak plainly, I doubt not that it was from their 
writings Dr. Sewall derived his knowledge of it — with* 
out, however, as is his custom, making any reference to 
them, as the source of that knowledge. Such reference 
would expose the limitedness of his researches. And 
that he is anxious to avoid, because the exposure would 
detract from his standing, and reputation for learning 
among his readers. There is but little danger, however, 
that any considerable number of his class of readers 
\vill detect his plagiarisms. I have already said that 
they are not phrenologists, and have therefore little or 
no acquaintance with the writings of Gall and Spurzheim. 
That the Professor knows, and therefore draws his mat- 
ter, in perfect security, from the works of the " German 
Doctors," Notwithstanding the pomp and parade of 

3* 



30 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, &K& 

learning which he makes in his " Two Lectures," I ven- 
ture to assert, that, in a single hour, I can make any 
sophomore in the country, as learned on the subject of 
authorities in phrenology as he is. In the compass of 
five or six pages I can show him the whole of them. 

I have said that Dr. Sewall begins, with Aristotle, his 
descant on the multiplex character of the brain. And 
on one of his assertions respecting that writer, I have a 
few remarks to offer ; because I believe the assertion 
unfounded. His words are as follows : " But while 
he (Aristotle) regarded the brain as multiplex, he con- 
$idered a small head as the standard of perfection, and 
contends that it is indicative of superior intellect." 

In the- truth of the underscored clause of the sentence 
I have no confidence. In plainer terms, I deem it un- 
founded*. I do not believe that Aristotle ever pronoun- 
ced a ^small head" either " the standard of perfection," 
©r a mark of "superior intellect." And I will state 
the ground of my disbelief First however, I must do 
Dr. Sewall tho justice to observe, that the error, if it 
be one, did not originate with him. In truth he is not 
guilty of originating any thing. He is essentially, in 
all things of mind, a borrower or a taker. And this is 
as true of his assertion respecting the great Greek phi- 
losopher,, as of his other assertions. I venture to say 
that he has never looked into the original writings of 
that author. Nor, I further say, could he have read 
them if he had. He is therefore ignorant of them. And 
as to translations and interpolations, they are insufficient 
authority — or rather no authority at all. But to my 
purpose. 

I do not believe that Aristotle has pronounced a small 



ANTIFHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 31 

head an evidence of u superior intellect ;" because I 
have been unable to find the assertion in his original 
works — I mean his works in his native tongue. And 
though I have not read, in Greek, one third of his wri- 
tings ; I have looked carefully through his philosophical 
writings for the sentiment in question ; but looked in 
vain. I could no where meet with it. If it be, not- 
withstanding, there, Professor Sewall will confer a fa- 
vour on me, by informing me of the place. 

I have still another reason for disbelieving that Aris- 
totle considered a small head a mark of superior intel- 
lect in its possessor. Such was not the prevalent opinion 
in ancient Greece — but the reverse. Painters and sculp- 
tors were there, as well as in every other place, strict ob- 
servers and imitators of nature.. On no other plea 
could the products of their labours have been creditable 
to them, or valuable in themselves. But it is well 
known, that to the figures and likenesses of their phi- 
losophers, sages, and other men of highly gifted minds, 
they never failed to give large heads. On the other 
hand, to their gladiators, wrestlers, foot-racers, and oth- 
er persons of mere corporeal distinction, they gave 
much smaller heads. Hence the heads of Zeno, Soc- 
rates, Plato, and Aristotle himself, as represented by 
the artists of their time, were large. The head of 
Pericles is handed down to us as large to deformity. 
The heads of Hercules, and other mere heroes and 
warriors, were comparitively small. In a special man- 
ner the frontal region was contracted. 

In representing their deities, on canvass and in mar-, 
ble, the artists observed the same rule. Hence the 
head of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, is much 



32 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

larger than that of Venus, the goddess of beauty, or of 
Diana, the huntress, whose occupation consisted chiefly 
in muscular action. And the head of Jupiter, the wisest 
and greatest of the heavenly throng, is immensely large. 
The frontal region in particular, where the organs of 
intellect lie, is enormous. In size, it is a counterpart to 
the muscles which he employs in hurling his thunder- 
bolts. The head of Apollo, the god of science, poe- 
try and taste, is also sufficiently large ; while the heads 
of Mercury and Bacchus, who held inferior and far less 
creditable godships, were much smaller. For the pre- 
ceding reasons, I say, I do not believe that ever Aris- 
totle declared a small head to be the badge of mental 
superiority. The notion is wholly unworthy of him ; 
because it is untrue. Were I even to find it in his wri- 
tings, I should be compelled to regard it as a misprint or 
an interpolation. I can, in no shape, attach to Aris- 
totle, an opinion which would now bring disgrace on a 
schoolboy. If he has intentionally expressed it in his 
writings, it must have been in the form of irony, jest, or 
ridicule. In earnest it could not have been. 

As respects the Baron Swedenborg, I know not whe- 
ther Dr. Sewall is serious, in asserting a likeness be- 
tween the visions of that amiable but wild monomaniac, 
and the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim. If he is, I 
pity him. His power of comparison, and his perception 
of similarity and dissimilarity must be extinct. He is so 
far therefore a monomaniac himself. For monomania 
consists in some derangement — excessive, diminished, 
extinguished, or perverted action — in one or a few of 
the original faculties of the mind, the others remaining 
unaffected. And nothing short of paralytic feebleness,. 



ANTIPHREXOLOGY UNMASKED. 33 

deep perversion, or entire extinction, of the powers of 
comparison, and of the perception of likeness and un- 
likeness, can induce Dr. Sewall or any body else, to 
identify the fancies of Swedenborg with the tenets of 
Phrenology. Swedenborg's writings, taken in matter, 
spirit, and manner, resemble the heated and irregular 
outpourings of high-toned fanatacism ; while those of 
Gall and Spurzheim are the grave, and calm, and sub- 
stantial productions of profound philosophy. Gall's 
great work on the anatomy and functions of the brain 
and nerves, and their instrumentality in the operations of 
the mind, is not surpassed indignity, depth, and solidity, 
by any production I have ever examined. Such at least 
is my own opinion ; and in making the comparison, I 
do not except either the " Novum Organum" of Bacon, 
the " Principia " of Newton, or the " Mechanique Ce- 
leste " of Laplace. And, of the four, it is a work of 
much the greater variety of matter and thought. To 
analyze the human mind, discover and expound its ori- 
ginal powers, and explain their functions and range of 
action, is, to say the least of it, as grand an achievement, 
and requires as capacious, discriminating, and powerful 
an intellect to accomplish it, as the discovery and illus- 
tration of the true mode of attaining knowledge by Ba- 
con, or the detection of the organization of the heavens, 
and the movements and laws of the celestial bodies, by 
Newton and Laplace. However extravagant this opin- 
ion may perhaps appear to many persons now, the time 
is approaching, when it will be viewed in the light of a 
familiar truth. 

I have said that there is neither affinity nor actual si- 
milarity between the discoveries and doctrines of Gall 



34 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

and Spurzheim, and the crude notions and shapeless re- 
veries of the Baron Swedenborg. In proof of this, the 
following extract from the Baron's writings is offered ; 
and it makes perhaps something more nearly resem- 
bling an approach toward some of the sentiments of 
Gall and Spurzheim, than any other clause which those 
writings contain. 

" The peculiar distinctions of man, will and under- 
standing, have their seat in the brain, which is excited 
by the fleeting desires of the will, and the ideas of the 
intellect. Near the various spots where these irritations 
produce their effects, this or that part of the brain is 
called into a greater or less degree of activity, and forms 
along with itself corresponding parts of the skull." 

Such is the incoherent jumble of words, expressing 
nothing but indefinite unintelligible notions, between 
which and the doctrines of Phrenology Dr. Sewall per- 
ceives a likeness. I shall only add, that it may be and pro- 
bably is near akin to the Doctor's Phrenology, the falla- 
cies and trashiness of which will be shown hereafter. 
But it is as unlike the Phrenology of Gall and Spurz- 
heim, as sophistry is unlike solid argument, and balder- 
dash unlike sound philosophy — or, stronger still, as the 
writings of Professor Sewall are unlike those of a well 
disciplined scholar, and a candid and profound inquirer. 

Equally inconsistent with justice and correct repre- 
sentation is it, to liken the discoveries and doctrines of 
Gall and Spurzheim to the visions and crude hypotheses 
of Gordon, Albertus Magnus, Peter de Montagnana, 
Servetus, Dolci, Portse, certain Arabian physicians, and 
other theorists, with which they have been frequently 
and disparagingly compared. Taken in their matter, 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 33 

principles, and application, the writings and teachings of 
the two Phrenologists are in depth, intelligibility, defini- 
tiveness and merit, wholly dissimilar to the writings of 
all or any of their predecessors. They are productions 
of an entirely different order and character. As already 
intimated, all other writers on mental philosophy, speak 
only of certain modes of action of the mind, such as 
perception, memory, will, judgment, understanding, and 
imagination ; while Gall and Spurzheim, passing beyond 
mere action and external manifestation, disclose the pri- 
mitive and innate faculties of mind, by which that action 
is* performed, and those manifestations made. They 
have stript off the veil, which had previously hung over 
the powers and instruments of memory, will, judgment, 
imagination, and every other form of mental action, and 
brought them fairly to light. They differ from other wri- 
ters on the philosophy of mind, exactly as he who analy- 
zes the human arm, and demonstrates and describes its 
muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, ligaments, bones, and 
such other parts as are subservient to its movements and 
economy, differs from him who simply speaks of those 
movements and that economy themselves. And as far 
as the accomplished anatomist surpasses in profundity 
on this point, the common unprofessional observer, so far 
do the German Phrenologists surpass all mental philoso- 
phers, who had gone before them, and from some of whom 
they have been groundlessly charged with having re- 
ceived hints and derived assistance. 

There are two facts in Phrenology, not so much noti- 
ced as they deserve to be, which, while they add not & 
little to its beauty and fitness, as the science of mind, 



36 PHRKNOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

testify at the same time strongly to its truth. I shall 
briefly indicate them. 

Man, possessed of the faculties which Phrenology be- 
stows on him, is precisely adapted to the situation he oc- 
cupies, as the head and chief of terrestrial beings. 
This could be easily and satisfactorily demonstrated, 
were the exposition a suitable one for the present occa- 
sion. Take from him a single faculty, animal, moral, 
or intellectual, and the privation so far unfits him for the 
station he holds. Add another faculty, and it will be 
useless, there being no demand for its exercise and func- 
tion. Those given to him by Phrenology appear to 
make up the exact complement of feeling, sentiment, 
and intellect, which he ought to possess. Compose 
man, on the other hand, of only the modes of mental ac- 
tion of which metaphysicians make him up, and he will 
be wholly unfit for an inhabitant of earth. He will be 
in fact a mere abstraction, unfit for any thing. Thus 
compounded moreover, his nature will be as mysterious 
and unintelligible, as it will be inapplicable to any useful 
end. Man, as an active being, is intended to be conver- 
sant, not with generalities and abstractions, but with spe- 
cialties and actual existences. He must be provided 
therefore with intellectual faculties fitted to give him a 
knowledge of individual objects, with their qualities of 
form, size, colour, and weight ; a knowledge also of lan- 
guage, of numbers, of place, of tune, of the lapse of 
time, of events, of likenesses and unlikenesses, equali- 
ties and inequalities, and of the important relations of 
cause and effect ; add to these, the feelings and senti- 
ments suited to make him act according to his wants 
and desires, and to the knowledge thus received, and he 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 37 

is well prepared for the station he holds, and the duties 
attached to it. And all these Phrenology gives him ; 
while metaphysical philosophy gives him not one of 
them — nor any thing else, to make him a being of defi- 
nite action, and practical usefulness. 

The other phrenological fitness and beauty alluded 
to is, the location in groups of the organs most closely 
allied to each other. Amativeness, Philoprogenitive- 
ness, Adhesiveness, and Inhabitiveness, form the family 
or domestic group ; and they lie in contact. Benevo- 
lence, Veneration, Wonder, Hope, and Conscientious- 
ness form the high moral and religious group : and they 
lie together. Form, Size, Weight, and Colour are the 
organs which furnish us with a knowledge of the essen- 
tial properties of matter ; and they are also grouped. Of 
all the other organs which co-operate to similar ends, 
the same is true. Of some of these kindred organs 
the fibres are known to intermingle with each other. 
And with all of them the case is probably the same. 
Hence the readiness with which they work together, 
and the aid which they promptly and mutually afford. 
Of all these aptitudes, beauties, and advantages, other 
schemes of mental philosophy are entirely destitute. 
Hence the surpassing value of Phrenology. 

I have charged Professor Sewall with plagiarism on 
my " Elements of Phrenology," written in 1826, and 
printed in 1827; and the charge shall now be made 
good. The plagiarism here referred to, is confined 
chiefly to the locations and descriptions of the phreno- 
logical organs ; and it is connected with garbling. The 
better to conceal his piracy, the Professor, omitting or 
changing occasionally a single word, or a brief expres- 

4 



38 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

sion, extracts skippingly here a clause or two, or a whole 
sentence or two, and there a clause or sentence or two 
more, and tacks them together, somewhat as a seam- 
stress makes a patch-work bed-quilt, or a notable 
housewife a rag-carpet. To render the view of the 
plagiarisms the more simple and easily understood, I 
shall place Professor SewalPs name over his language, 
and my own name over mine. 

amativeness. 
Sewall. 
This organ is situated in the cerebellum, or the 
lower part of the occiput. When full it gives a back- 
ward protrusion of the occipitis, and a thickness to the 
upper part of the neck. Its function is sexual love. 

Caldwell. 
Seat The cerebellum, or lower part of the occiput. 
When strongly developed, it produces a backward pro- 
vision of the os occipitis, giving unusual thickness to 
the upper part of the neck. Its function is sexual 
love. 

ph1loprogenitiveness. 
Sewall. 

Situated at the occiput, immediately above Amative^ 
ness. * * Its function is the love of offspring. It is 
more fuliy developed in women than in men. * * Of 
twenty-nine females who had been guilty of infanticide, 
the development was defective in twenty-seven. 

Caldwell. 
Seat. The occiput, immediately above Amativenes*. 



ANTIPHRENOTOttV UNMASKED. 39 

Its function L me love of offspring. This organ is more 
strongly developed in women than in men. * * Of 
twenty-nine females who had been guilty of infanticide, 
the development of the organ of Philoprogenitiveness 
was defective in twenty-seven. 

concentrativeness. 

Sewall. 

Situated immediately above Philoprogenitiveness, and 

below Self-esteem. Its function is to maintain two or 

more powers in simultaneous or combined activity, so 

that they may be directed towards one object. 

Caldwell. 

Seat. Just above Philoprogenitiveness. * * * Its 
function is believed to be, to maintain in simultaneous 
and joint activity two or more of the intellectual pow- 
ers, so that they may be concentrated on the same object. 

covetiveness or acquisitiveness. 
Sewall. 

Situated immediately behind Constructiveness. Its 
function is the love of acquisition generally. * * * 
When largely developed, and not regulated by the high- 
er faculties, it often leads to dishonesty and theft. A 
chaplain in the Prussian army, in whom it was large, 
in other respects a worthy and pious man, was remarka- 
ble for stealing pocket handkerchiefs, pen-knives, books, 
ladies' stockings, and indeed every thing portable in the 
nature of property. 

Caldwell. 

Seat. On each side of the head, immediately be- 
hind No. 7, (Constructiveness). Its function is a love 



40 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

of acquisition generally. If not restrained and prop- 
erly regulated by the higher faculties, it leads to great 
selfishness and even theft. * * * * A chaplain 
in the Prussian army, in all other respects a very wor- 
thy man, was remarkable for the propensity. He stole 
pocket-handkerchiefs, pen-knives, books, ladies' stock- 
ings, and indeed every thing portable in the nature of 

property. 

secretiveness. 

Sewall. 
Its function is the love of secrecy. * * * When 
largely developed, and not properly balanced by the 
higher faculties, it leads to management, lying, duplici- 
ty, and deceit. When properly controlled, it augments 
the efficiency of character. In courts and cabinets, it 
is a powerful engine. It is the diplomatist's sword and 
buckler. The fox, and several animals of the cat- 
kind, are remarkable for it. In some of the human 
race, it is almost their only power. 

Caldwell. 
Its*function is the love of secrecy. * * * * 
When not properly controlled and regulated by the 
higher faculties, it leads to management, intrigue, and 
falsehood. In relation to conduct, it is the source of 
art, hypocrisy, and cunning. When directed by an en- 
lightened intellect, and restrained within proper limits 
by the moral powers, it augments not a little the effi- 
ciency of character. In courts and cabinets it is a 
powerful engine. On many occasions, it is the diplo- 
matist's sword and buckler. * * * The fox and 
several animals of the cat-kind, are remarkable for it. 
In some of the human race it is almost their only power. 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED* 41 

love of approbation. 
Sewall. 
Situated oa each side of self-esteem. Its function 
is the love of approbation and applause. If directed 
to objects of importance ; it becomes a lofty and noble 
ambition, and leads to corresponding efforts and achieve- 
ments ; but when its objects are low and trivial, it de- 
generates into vanity, and leads to frivolity. 

Caldwell. 
Seat. On each side of No. 10 (self-esteem). The 
function of this organ is love of approbation or ap- 
plause. If it be directed to objects of importance, it 
becomes a lofty and noble ambition, and leads to cor- 
responding effort and achievement. But if its objects 
be low and trivial, it degenerates into vanity, and leads 
to frivolity. 

cautiousness. 
Sewall. 
Situated in front of No. 11. Its function is the sen- 
timent of circumspection, or the impulse to take care. 
Regulated and sustained by the other faculties, this 
sentiment becomes prudence ; but not thus modified, it 
degenerates into instability, doubt, demur, 

Caldwell. 
Seat. On each side, adjoining No. 11, in front of 
it. The function of this is the sentiment of circum- 
spection, or the impulse to take care. * * * Regu- 
lated and sustained by the other faculties, this sentiment 
becomes prudence. But if not thus modified, it de* 
4* 



42 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AN15 

generates into irresolution, and instability, doubt and 
demur, 

Sewall. 
The five following organs are proper to man, and con- 
stitute the line of demarcation between him and the in- 
ferior animals. 

Caldwell. 
The five following organs and sentiments are proper 
to man, and constitute the real lines of demarcation 
between him a-nd the inferior animals. 

HOPE. 

Sewall. 

Situated on each side of veneration. Its function 
produces a tendency to believe in the possibility of what 
the other faculties desire. * * * It is the castle- 
builders home, his heaven, his consolation in disap- 
pointment ; his panacea for every evil. It is the cyno- 
sure to which his soul perpetually points. 

Caldwell. 
Seat. Immediately adjoining No. 14 (veneration) 
on each side. Its function is a tendency, without any 
solid ground of conviction, to believe in the possibility 
of what the other faculties desire. It is in a particular 
manner the castle-builder's home — he dwells in hope 
— it is his heaven* and gives him every good — his 
consolation under disappointment — his panacea for 
every evil — it is the cynosure, to which his soul per- 
petually points. 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 43 

IDEALITY. 

Sewall. 
Situated above 7 and 8. Its function is to give ex- 
quisiteness of feeling. It is the fountain of enthusiasm 
not only of the poet, but of the philosopher, the orator, 
the painter, the sculptor, the philanthropist, and of the 
high-minded warrior. It is the organ of poetry, and 
confers a relish for poetry on those who do not write. 
It gives refinement and taste. It communicates to elo- 
quence its splendour and soul, and to conversation its 
highest charms and brilliancy. 

Caldwell. 
Seat. Immediately above Nos. 7 and 8. Its func- 
tion is to give exquisiteness to feeling. ***'*<* 
This organ is the fountain of enthusiasm not merely to 
the poet, but to the philosopher, the orator, the painter, 
the sculptor, the mechanician, the philanthropist, and 
even to the generous and high-minded warrior. It con- 
fers a relish for poetry on those who do not write, and 
gives refinement to the taste of those who judge. It 
communicates to eloquence its splendour and its soul, 
and to conversation its highest charms and brilliancy. 

individuality. 
Sewall. 
Its function is to give the faculty of practical obser- 
vation, and the capacity to acquire knowledge in de- 
tached parcels, but not to put it well together. The 
possessor is full of matter for conversation and anec- 
dote, but is a mere detailer of facts, which he seldom 
attempts to classify. He is a man of extensive inform- 
ation, rather than a profound philosopher. 



44 phrenology vindicated, and 

Caldwell. 
Its function is to give the faculty of practical observa- 
tion, and the capacity to acquire knowledge in detached 
parcels, but not to put it well together. The possessor 
of it is an agreeable, often an instructive companion. 
He is pregnant in matter for conversation, in which he 
is often accounted brilliant; but he is a mere detailer 
of facts and anecdotes, which he rarely attempts to 
classify or arrange. He is a man of information, rath- 
er than a profound philosopher. 

Such are a few of the more open and daring piracies, 
committed by Professor Sewall, on the " Elements of 
Phrenology." Thrice the number, at least, of a more 
covert and dastardly character, but equally certain, could 
be easily adduced. The act, however, most discreditable 
to its author, as a mark of ignorance, and which ought 
therefore most to mortify and humiliate him, has not 
been yet represented. Like most mere copyists and 
imitators, the Professor is unable to discriminate between 
the faults of his original and the excellencies. He has 
therefore copied promiscuously. 

In 1827, the date of the publication of my "Elements," 
the organ of Eventuality had not been discovered ; or 
rather its peculiar function had not been ascertained. 
It was considered as making a part of Individuality ; 
and, from being situated immediately over that organ, 
and in contact with it, it was called Upper Individuality, 
At a subsequent period, however, it was found to be 
the recogniser or perceiver, not of individual objects, but 
of facts, or events. Hence, in correspondence with its 
function, it was called Eventuality, and is so delineated, 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 45 

named, and described, by Spurzheim, Combe, and other 
writers, whose works have appeared, since the time of 
the publication of my " Elements. " For the reason 
already stated then, Eventuality not having a place in 
my production, Professor Sewall has copied so accu- 
rately, as to omit entirely that organ and its faculty, in 
his " Two Lectures." That this act of copyism has 
the merit of entire faithfulness and exactitude, may not 
be denied. In the performance of it, the Professor re- 
minds us of the strict imitativeness of the Chinese tailor, 
who, having had sent to him an old coat with a patch 
on each elbow, as a pattern to work by, put like patches 
on the elbows of the new coat he constructed. 

Two other recently discovered cerebral organs and 
their functions are now spoken of by systematic writers 
on Phrenology — Vitativeness, the love or desire of life, 
and Alimentiveness, the love or desire of nourishment. 
Of these also Professor Sewall is presumed to be igno- 
rant ; becuuse he has made no reference to them in his 
pamphlet ; and because they are not treated of in my 
work, to which he has so faithfully and scrupulously 
adhered. 

Under this head I shall only add, that, throughout all 
his preceding purloinings from the " Elements of Phre-. 
nology," he has neither once referred to the work, by its 
title, nor used a single mark of quotation, to show that 
he was working with borrowed matter. 

The Professor closes Lecture I. with a few remarks 
of a somewhat general and abstract character respecting 
Phrenology, to which he gives the name of " rules ;" and 
in his exposition of each one of which he deviates more 
or less from truth — in his statement of some of them 



46 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

widely — whether from ignorance or by design, I shall 
not pause to inquire. Here stands one of his rules : 

" First, Every faculty desires gratification, with a de- 
gree of energy, proportionate to the size of the organ. " 

This is untrue, as every well informed Phrenologist 
knows, and every correctly written work on the subject 
testifies. The " size " of an organ makes but one of at 
least four distinct and oft-repeated conditions of its 
strength. I would inform Dr. Sewall what the three 
remaining conditions are, did I not think it more to his 
benefit that he should once more look into phrenological 
writings, and, while he is attaining a knowledge of the 
conditions in question, acquire a more creditable ac- 
quaintance with the"science at large. 

Another disgraceful blunder, or intentional and un- 
principled misrepresentation — the Professor may take 
his choice. 

"If the organ of Acquisitiveness is large, and that of 
Benevolence is also full, the two propensities being thus 
counterpoised, there may be no special desire of accu- 
mulating wealth manifested, and as little of the spirit of 
liberal giving." 

This is no phrenological doctrine. The organs of 
Acquisitiveness and Benevolence neither counterbalance 
nor neutralize each other. They may both be large in 
the same individual, and both be exercised freely and 
independently. They then act alternately. A man 
may, and often does, labour strenuously to acquire 
property, and makes of it, when acquired, appropria- 
tions and dispositions the most liberal and charita- 
ble. Benevolence only forbids him to create distress, 
in his operations to gratify Acquisitiveness. But it 
in no way interferes with his acquisitions of proper- 



ANtlPHRENOLOGV UNMASKED. 47 

ty, when effected, as they may be, without either vio* 
lating justice, or producing pain of body or mind. Nor 
does Acquisitiveness throw an obstacle in the way of 
kindness and liberality. It often draws in, that Bene* 
volence may the more certainly gratify itself by pouring 
out. Hence many of the most industrious and money- 
making individuals never grow rich. It is the abuse of 
Self-esteem that puts a check on Benevolence, hoards 
the products of Acquisitiveness, and creates the miser. 
In his attempt to show that certain other organs coun* 
terpoise and neutralize each other, our author manifests 
equal ignorance, and is therefore equally at fault. His 
attempts to philosophize in Phrenology are abundantly 
feeble, and intellectually discreditable. Nor are his ef- 
forts at sarcasm and misrepresentation less so. Yes; 
singular as it may appear, he is crude and clumsy even 
in misrepresentation, notwithstanding his habitual and 
extensive practice in it. In proof of this, take the fol- 
lowing meditated blow, the obvious untruth and awk- 
wardness of which render it harmless to the intended 
victims, and make it recoil on the assailant. He pro- 
fesses in it to show it to be one of the doctrines of 
Phrenology, that every person possessing large deve- 
lopements, moves in the direction of the organ which 
predominates for the time. 

" The devout man (says he) bows his head forward 
in order to present the organ of Veneration, in the di- 
rection of the Deity in the Heavens." 

This I say is at once impertinent and untrue. Worse 
still for the intellect of its author, it is a gross blunder. 
No Phrenologist has ever uttered the notion ; or if so, 
he is an ignoramus, as to the location of the organs. 



48 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

And so must Dr. Sewall be, else he would not have 
made so silly an attempt to bring Phrenology into dis- 
repute. The meditated but miserable sarcasm, recoils 
from its object, and fastens on himself. The organ of 
Veneration occupies the crown of the arch of the coro- 
nal region of the head. It points directly to the heav- 
ens therefore when the individual stands erect — not 
when he "bows his head forward." Its direction du- 
ring that position of the head, deviates from the course 
toward the heavens, by an angle of many degrees. 

With this, I close my examination of Lecture I., 
and pass to the consideration of 

LECTURE II. 

In the first paragraph of this lecture, appears the fol- 
lowing remarkable clause : 

" My object in this lecture will be to show how far 
the science (of Phrenology) is reconcilable with the ana- 
tomical structure and organization of the brain, the 
cranium, and other parts concerned." 

Here is submitted a proposition, which, if sincerely 
submitted, is as boastful and groundless; and, if insincere, 
as wanton and reprehensible as art can devise, or ima- 
gination conceive. Either Professor Sewall is ignorant 
of the fundamental principles of physiology ; or the 
pretension here held out by him, is intended to deceive. 
I am most inclined to believe the latter branch of the 
dilemma ; being hardly prepared to suppose the Profes- 
sor enveloped in so deqp and dark a cloud of profes- 
sional ignorance, as the truth of the first branch would 
throw around him. 

The necessity which impels me to the adoption of 



ANTIPHRENOtOGY UNMASKED.. 49 

this belief, is unwelcome to me. The change of opin- 
ion which an occurrence of the kind produces, respecting 
a man who had been more favourably thought of, 
engenders not only regret, but mortification at our 
mistake ; and, worse still, it tends to create suspicion 
in relation to other persons, and thus to darken and em- 
bitter our brighter and kindlier thoughts of human nature. 
Did I suffer the measures of Professor Sewall at all to 
influence me in these respects, such would be the effect 
produced on me, by his deliberate efforts at deception 
and misguidance, with a view to bring Phrenology and 
its advocates into disrepute. I say the " advocates " of 
Phrenology ; for the insults he has offered them, by his 
remarks, are numerous and gross ; and the imputation 
aimed at the purity of their motives by him, in the three 
following paragraphs, is as false and flagitious as offen- 
sive language and a malicious spirit can render it. 

" There is a celebrated divine now living in Scotland, 
equally distinguished for his amiable disposition, his 
gigantic powers of mind, und the great moral influence 
which he exerts upon the Christian world. This indi- 
vidual, it is said, has the organ of destructiveness very 
largely developed, and not having any counteracting 
organ very large, it is contended by those who are 
acquainted with the fact, that he manifests his inherent 
disposition to murder, by his mighty efforts to destroy 
vice, and break down systems of error. In this way, 
he gratifies his propensity to shed blood." 

11 By a recent examination of the head of the cele- 
brated infidel Voltaire, it is found that he had the organ 
of veneration developed to a very extraordinary degree, 
5 



50 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

For him it is urged, that his veneration for the Deity 
was so great, his sensibility on the subject of devotion 
so exquisite, that he became shocked and disgusted with 
the irreverence of even the most devout Christians, and 
that out of pure respect and veneration for the Deity, 
he attempted to exterminate the Christian religion from 
the earth. 

" Other explanations as much at variance with truth 
and common sense, are resorted to in carrying out the 
system." 

Such are the improbable, ill-contrived, and senseless 
falsehoods, which the vapid imagination of Professor 
Sewall has fabricated, with the intent of bringing ridi- 
cule and odium on Phrenology and its expounders. I 
do not call them its defenders ; because when well ex- 
pounded, it most effectually defends itself and needs no 
other advocate. 

Dr. Sewall is challenged to name the Phrenologist 
of good standing, or of any standing, who has given the 
preceding explanations of the characters of Yoltaire and 
Dr. Chalmers ; the latter being, I doubt not, the great 
Scottish divine, to whom the allusion is so falsely and 
unbecomingly made. Nor will the challenge be ac- 
cepted. The reason is plain. No Phrenologist can 
be referred to as the author of the explanations. Dr. 
Sewall is himself the author; and he cannot escape from 
the imjjutation. I hold myself responsible, in pronounc- 
ing the fabrication a work of his own mind — a shallow 
artifice, of his own contrivance, coolly, deliberately and 
maliciously executed. It is a sinister, but feeble blow, 
designed, not for the overthrow of error, but for the 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 51 

achievement of victory over a system of impregnable 
doctrines, to which the assailant is hostile — regardless 
whether it is attempted on true or false ground. 

Dr. Sewall's paragraph about Dr. Chalmers in parti- 
cular, is a flimsy network of mendacity and ignorance, 
mistake and blunder. It is not true that the great 
Scottish divine has " destructiveness very largely devel- 
oped," and no " counteracting organ very large." His 
ruling organs are all large ; and hence the unusual size 
of his head, the power of his intellect, and the corres- 
ponding weight and strength of his character. Were 
not his moral and intellectual organs large (his religious 
organs being included under the term "moral") he 
neither would nor could make " mighty efforts to destroy 
vice, and break down systems of error." Such " efforts " 
require large and powerful moral organs to give to the 
disposition sufficient strength, and large and powerful 
intellectual ones to do the work. Such at least is the 
phrenological doctrine on the subject ; and Dr. Sewall 
knows it ; else he is a punier novice than I have thought 
him. 

It is evident, however, that he is ignorant of the true 
bearings, and of the whole range of action of the organ 
of Destructiveness. He evidently thinks (else is his 
phraseology inaccurate and deceptive) that the function 
it performs and the propensity it gives, lead exclusively 
to the" shedding of blood." This is a vulgar error. It is 
the phrenological doctrine of the stage-coach and the rail- 
road car, the beer-house, and the newspapers. From 
which of these fountains the Professor has imbibed his 
phrenological draughts and inspiration, or whether from 
either or all of them, I neither know nor care. But I well 



52 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

know that he has not derived them from the writings of 
either Gall, Spurzheim, Combe, or Broussais ; nor from 
any other standard work in Phrenology. To all such 
works they are in direct opposition ; because they are 
in direct opposition to truth. 

The function of Destructiveness, or rather the pro- 
pensity it bestows, is to destroy, in the abstract or gene- 
ral meaning of the term ; and the kind of destruction to 
which it may lead, depends entirely on circumstances and 
their influences. It depends materially on the condi- 
tion and sway of concomitant organs. It may be moral 
or intellectual, as certainly as physical ; because there 
are moral and intellectual evils to be destroyed. Vice 
belongs to the first class, and error to the second. If 
serpents, alligators, tigers, and other noxious and destruc- 
tive animals, as well as enemies and monsters in human 
shape, are to be beaten down and eradicated, so are the 
pernicious errors that mislead, and the ruinous vices that 
contaminate society. Of the two forms of war and havoc, 
requisite for these purposes, the latter is far the most 
important. Moral and mental are not only worse than 
physical and corporeal evils ; they are productive of 
them. And, other things being alike, the individual with 
large Destructiveness is best fitted to vanquish the for- 
mer class of foes to human happiness, as well as the 
latter. 

Destructiveness, while it renders the human charac- 
ter stern and severe, bestows on it much of its energy, 
keenness, and power of action. One of its effects is, to 
wind up the other faculties to a higher pitch, and thus 
impart to them a tenser tone. It points and sharp- 
ens the steel of satire and irony, invective and sarcasm* 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED, 53 

and renders it more piercing, trenchant, and terrible. It is 
also the chief source of ill-nature, malice, slander, male- 
dictions, and imprecations of mischief on those who have 
given offence, and, in fact, of every word and action de- 
signed for the production of unnecessary pain. It gives, 
moreover, to those possessing it in full developement a 
power to paint scenes of blood and slaughter in deeper 
colours, and with bolder and more terrific features, and 
to describe them in stronger, more thrilling, and appro- 
priate^ianguage, than could ever be attained to, by per- 
sons endowed with it in a very limited degree. Nor is 
this all. Poets and other writers, who have large and 
active Destructiveness, have not only a capacity ; they 
have also a passion for descriptions of battle and car- 
nage. For such forms of mental exercise they have an 
instinctive fondness. Scott and Byron are in proof of this. 
They had both very full and vigorous Destructiveness ; 
but the former in particular had it under perfect control, 
in consequence of the surpassing size and strength of his 
moral and reflecting organs* When he chose, however, 
to slip the leash, and give this mental dog of war full 
freedom and scope of action, in his battle and havoc de- 
scriptions, as he often did, its power was terrific. Take, 
as a single instance, out of scores, perhaps hundreds of 
the same character, that might be adduced, the follow- 
ing fearful language-picture of the vengeance inflicted 
by " The Bruce," on Cormac Doyle, for the treacher-. 
ous assassination of his favourite page : 

1 ' Not so awoke the Bruce ! — his hand 
Snatched from the flame a knotted brand, 
The nearest weapon of his wrath; 
"With this he crossed the murderer's path, 



54 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, ANB 

And venged young Allan well ! 
The spattered brain, and bubbling blood 
Hissed on the half-extinguished wood j 
The miscreant gasped and fell!" 

A more horror- striking portrait of the ruthless and 
vindictive crushing of human existence has never been 
drawn. Nor, without the aid of large Destructiveness, 
could Scott have conceived and given life to such a 
fancy-piece of slaughter, any more than a dwarf could 
bend the bow of Ulysses, or hurl the rock, with which 
Hector struck down the warrior that opposed him. 

Of his description of the death of Bertram the same 
may be said. The picture is awful. 

& While yet the smoke the deed eoneeals, 
Bertram his ready charger wheels j 
But, floundered on the pavement floor 
The steed, and down the rider bore i 
And bursting in the headlong sway, 
The faithless saddle-girths gave way. 
'Twas while he toiled him to be freed, 
And with the rein to raise the steed, 
That from amazement's iron trance, 
All Wickliffe's soldiers waked at once. 
Sword, halbert, musket-butt, their blows 
Hailed upon Bertram as he rose j 
A score of pikes, with each a wound 
Bore down and pinned him to the ground ; 
But still his struggling force he rears, 
'Gainst hacking brands and stabbing spears - t 
Thrice from assailants shook him free, 
Once gained his feet, and twice his knee. 
By tenfold odds oppressed at length, 
Despite his struggles and his strength, 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED* 55 

He took a hundred mortal wounds, 
As mute as fox 'mongst mangling hounds, 
And when he died, his parting groan 
Had more of laughter than of moan." 

Even in his glowing delineation of the subversion of 
a pile of dead matter, Scott manifests the giant strength 
of his Destructiveness. I allude to his volcanic picture 
of the night-burning of Rokeby castle. 

" In gloomy arch above them spread, 
The clouded heaven lowered bloody red ; 
Beneath, in sombre light, the flood 
Appeared to roll in waves of blood. 
Then one, by one, was heard to fall 
The tower, the donjon-keep, the hall. 
Each rushing down with thundering sound, 
A space the conflagration drown'd ; 
Till, gathering strength, again it rose, 
Announced its triumph in its close, 
Shook wide its light the landscape o'er, 
Then sunk — and Rokeby was no more ! rt 

Does any one wish to witness the outpourings of the 
Destructiveness of Byron, in satire, and malediction ? 
Let him turn to the " Curse of Minerva," and be abun- 
dantly gratified. He will there find such lines as the 
following, shedding blight and burning wherever they 
strike. And first on the name and character of Lord 
Elgin, for despoiling the Parthenon of its inimitable 
ornaments. 

" For Elgin's fame thus grateful Pallas pleads ; 
Below, his name — above, behold his deeds! 
Be ever hailed with equal honours here, 
The Gothic monarch, and the Pictish peer ! 



56 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

Arms gave the first his right — the last had none, 

But basely stole what less barbarians won ! 

So, when the lion quits his fell repast, 

Next prowls the wolf — the filthy jackall last ! 

Flesh, limbs, and blood, the former make their own ; 

The last base brute securely gnaws the bone ! " 

The following curse is on the same : 

"Hear then in silence Pallas' stern behest; 
Hear and believe, for time shall tell the rest. 
First on the head of him who did the deed 
My curse shall fall, on him and all his seed • 
Without one spark of intellectual fire, 
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire ; 
If one with wit the parent brood disgrace, 
Believe him bastard of a brighter race." 

The poem abounds in such thunder-striking passages, 
the fearful product of the same faculty. 

Thus spacious is the sphere of action, and thus mul- 
tiplied the bearings and influences of the organ of De- 
structiveness, in the exercises of the mind — and without 
being pushed beyond its proper limits, the picture might 
be extended. Yet so barren and defective is Professor 
SewalPs conception of its function, that he pronounces 
it a mere " propensity to shed blood ! " And, rich, as 
he doubtless considers himself in this mite of intelli- 
gence, he draws on it as his treasury for the instruction 
of the age ! The Professor's grasp of mind is quite too 
narrow and microscopic for the office of a teacher — es*. 
pecially for a teacher of menial philosophy. His own 
mental vision embraces things on so petty a scale, and 
with so single a bearing, as to remind one of the second 
line in the following couplet of Pope ; 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 57 

" While man exclaims, see all things for my use ! 
See man for mine, replies a pampered goose /" 

See the organ of Destructiveness, says the antagonist 
of Gall and Spurzheim and Combe f and others, design- 
ed to bestow on its possessor, a "- propensity to shed 
blood L" — Had he received from nature less of a " pro- 
pensity to shed" — ink, on a subject with which he is 
unacquainted, the press would have been a flood-gate 
of less error than it has been ; and he himself would 
have had less cause to sink under mortification, and 
forswear his pen which has so fatally disgraced him. 

Professor SewalPs remarks on the character of Yol- 
taire are, if possible y still more offensive and reprehen- 
sible. The spirit of mendacity and defamation that 
pervades them is inexpressibly odious. That Yoltaire 
had a full development of Yeneration is true, And 
that, in the early part of his life, he entertained a high 
reverence for a Great First Cause, is also true. Of 
his sentiments on that subject, in his latter years, I 
know less — perhaps I should say I know nothing. It 
might have become perverted, greatly enfeebled, or en- 
tirely extinguished. Occurrences of the kind have 
repeatedly taken place. I myself have witnessed them. 
One of the most irreverent and profane beings I have 
ever known, was a lunatic, who had once been an enthu- 
siast in religion. Be these points however as they may* 
the explanation of Yoltaire's infidelity, which the Pro- 
fessor has attempted to palm on the public, as the pro- 
duct of Phrenology, is scandalously false. It is not 
true, I mean, that any enlightened and correct Phrenolo- 
gist has ever offered such an explanation. If so, Pro- 
fessor Sewall is called upon to name him, and give his 



58 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

explanation in his own words. Who, except the Pro- 
fessor himself, in one of his unhappy and disgraceful 
moods ever penned such a sentence as the following 1 

" For him (Voltaire) it is urged, that his veneration 
for the Deity was so great, his sensibility on the sub- 
ject of devotion so exquisite, that he became shocked 
and disgusted with the irreverence of even the most de- 
vout christians, and that out of pure respect and vene- 
ration for the Deity, he attempted to exterminate the 
christian religion from the earth!" 

What Phrenologist, I again demand of Dr. Sewall, 
(the atrocity of the case justifies the word " demand") 
has ever made this statement, or any thing like it, re- 
specting the cause of the infidelity of Voltaire ? Nor 
will he answer the demand. He dare not answer it. 
He has ventured so far already into the flood of false- 
hood, that he will shrink from going farther lest it should 
overwhelm him. The statement is the product of his 
own mind, compounded and concocted to poison the 
public ear, and render it deaf to truth. A conscious- 
ness of this will close his lips ; because to speak would 
but cover him with deeper disrepute. Silence is his 
only protection from scorn, and he will use it to that 
effect. If I wrong him in these charges, he has but to 
convince me of the fact, to receive from me prompt and 
ample amends. Intentional injustice I do to no one. 
The charges are not made wantonly, or without reflec- 
tion. They are preferred on ground which I consider 
valid ; and nothing short of what I may deem more 
valid, shall induce me to withdraw them. To be com- 
pelled to speak thus of Dr. Sewall is not only unpleas- 
ant, but mortifying to me. And should any one blame 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 59 

me for doing so, my reply and only defence would be, 
that, however improper, in such a case, the office of 
censor may be for me, I cannot admit that the censure 
and rebuke are misbestowed. 

It is understood that Yoltaire became " shocked and 
disgusted at the irreverence " not of " the most devout 
christians," but of the professors and ministers of the 
christian religion, because they were not "devout" — in 
plainer language, because they were profligate and hypo- 
critical. He took offence at the corruptions and de- 
baucheries of the priesthood ; and, as is too often the 
case, he did not stop with taking offence at them. He 
unfortunately extended his disapproval and dislike to 
the religion which they abused. As they were the high- 
est and most zealous professors of Christianity, the de- 
fenders of its principles, the expounders of its doctrines, 
the depositories of its mysteries, the commissioned and 
consecrated ministers of its rites, and the dispensers of 
its benefits and blessings — as they stood related to it 
in these several high, sacred, and responsible capacities, 
he regarded them erroneously as its true representatives. 
Finding them corrupt therefore, he inferred improperly, 
that the leaven of their corruption pervaded and pollu- 
ted the entire system. And hence his enmity to the 
christian religion. 

It does not however follow, that, because the philoso- 
pher of Ferney was not a christian, he was therefore 
destitute of reverence and devoutness. Far from it. 
A sentiment of veneration is the product of nature ; 
not of any given form of religion. Much nearer the 
truth would it be, to say that the organ of Yeneration 
is the source of religion — for, without that organ in 



60 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

man, religion could have no existence in him. In a 
higher or lower degree, a sentiment of veneration is an 
attribute of the human race. All men of sound minds 
have their share of it, what ever form of religion they 
profess or follow ; or whether they profess or follow any 
form. It is not to be doubted, that, under certain sys- 
tems of paganism, higher reverence is manifested, and 
a more intense devotion professed and practised, than 
under the christain religion. Because one scheme of 
religion is more rational and true than another, it is not 
on that account certain that the professors of it are ei- 
ther more sincere in their belief of it, or more ardently 
devout in their acts of worship. The followers of the 
crescent are as zealous in their faith, and more strict 
and sanctimonious in their devotional exercises, than the 
followers of the cross. When the worshipper of Jug- 
gernaut moreover prostrates himself to be crushed by 
the car-wheels of his god, it is an act of religious de- 
votion ; and so is that of the Hindoo widow, when she 
voluntarily consumes herself on the funeral pile, with 
the body of her husband. Nor does Christianity furnish 
at the present period, any such offerings of devotedness 
as these. Nor had primitive Christianity, in the meridi- 
an of its fervour, any thing of faith and zeal to surpass 
them. Even the crown-seeking martyr had nothing to 
offer more precious than life. And that offering is not 
withheld by the pagan. 

All this shows, that religion is an inherent sentiment ; 
not the result of a system of opinions. Nor, of course, 
does the superiority of devoutness bespeak any superi- 
ority in the system of religion, under which it occurs. 
It is the fruit of cerebral development, and cerebral 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 61 

training. The mere doctrines of religion have no in- 
fluence on it, though the mode of worship may ; because 
one mode of worship may exercise the organ of vene- 
ration more than another ; and a higher degree of ex- 
ercise gives it superior size and strength. I shall only 
add, that in the conical heads of some Asiatic nations, 
the development of Veneration and the other religious 
organs, is fuller than in any of the national heads of 
Europe, or in the heads of the people of the United 
States. Hence the fanatical depth of their supersti- 
tions and devotions. And we are confidently told, that 
a like form of head usually characterizes those individ- 
uals, who pertinaciously adhere to a bigoted belief in 
the doctrine of the divine right of kings to the throne 
and the judgment seat, the sceptre and the sword. 

Neither Christianity then, nor any other form of re- 
ligion can be justly referred to as tests of either the 
falsehood or the truth of Phrenology. Nor could any 
thing short of ignorance or artifice have induced Dr. 
Sewall to make the reference. The latter cause is I 
doubt not the true one. He has appealed to the church, 
in the spirit of intrigue, to put her ban on Phrenology, 
and by her authoritative influence aid him in his attempt 
to subvert it, because his end is unattainable by reason 
and argument. But the appeal will be fruitless. The 
church will not aid him. Not a few of her ablest and 
most enlightened members and ministers have already 
become the advocates of Phrenology ; and they will all 
become so, as soon as the science shall be fairly under- 
stood by them. Instead of continuing to frown on it, 
the time is approaching when they will frown on those, 
who have artfully attempted to withhold from them the 
6 



62 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

knowledge of it. And in such an attempt the Doctor 
has signalized himself — but not by his ability. When 
stript of its artifice, his effort is feeble. I shall close 
my remarks on this topic, by referring once more to the 
deep insult Dr. Sewall has offered, and the coarse slan- 
der and defamation he has practiced toward the whole 
phrenological world, in the following sentence which has 
been already quoted : 

" Other explanations, as much at variance ivith truth 
and common sense, are resorted to (by Phrenologists) in 
carrying out the system." 

In plain English, Phrenologists are a brotherhood of 
liars or fools or both. Such is the true interpretation of 
the Professors charge. And against tohom, and by 
whom is it made 1 Delicate and weighty as it is, this 
question must be answered. 

The charge is preferred against Gall and Spurzheim, 
and all their followers, consisting at present of hundreds 
of thousands ; among them not a few as able and illus- 
trious as any men of the age ; and no less signalized by 
their morals and virtues, than by science and letters. 

On the other hand, the charge is made by a single 
individual, and, as far as I know, by him alone ; and that 
individual is Dr. Thomas Sewall of Washington city ; a 
name which has yet to find a place in the catalogue of 
the literati and philosophers of the day. Nor have we 
hitherto received any strong indications of its fitness for 
such a place. 

After this specification and contrast of the accuser 
and the accused, accompanied by a request that the 
reader will " look on this picture, and on this," of the 
parties concerned, I shall only subjoin, that if there be, 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 63 

in the records of insolence and injustice, an act of 
greater audacity, than Dr. Sewall has here been guilty 
of, I know not the page which it soils and disgraces. 

I must now return, and offer a few remarks on Dr. 
Sewall's proposition laid down in the beginning of 
" Lecture II.," in which he pledges himself to "show, 
how far Phrenology is reconcilable with the anatomical 
structure and organization of the brain, the cranium, 
and other parts concerned ;" and on his declaration 
which immediately follows, that the anatomy of the parts 
concerned, is the proper and only standard by which to 
ascertain the truth of the science. The meaning of this 
extraordinary allegation is, that a knowledge of the ana- 
tomy of any part of the human body is our only clue to 
guide us to a knowledge of its physiology or function ; 
than which a more groundless assertion was never ut- 
tered. So far is it from having even the semblance of 
correctness in it, that in no single instance has the func- 
tion of a part ever been discovered by an examination of 
its anatomical structure. No ; the functions of organs 
are discovered by observation alone ; observation, I 
mean, made, not on the organic structure of the parts 
when dead ; but on their action and its results while 
living. And even when the discovery is made, no pe- 
culiar aptitude is perceptible between the anatomy of 
the organs, and their modes of action. That aptitude 
no researches in minute anatomy have yet demonstrated. 
And that the demonstration will ever be made, is far 
from being certain. But it is very certain that enlight- 
ened anatomists and physiologists disclaim all pretension 
to such accuracy of knowledge at present. If Dr. 
Sewall sincerely believes otherwise, his ignorance on 



64 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED^ AND 

the subject is eminently disgraceful to him. And if he 
is acquainted with the plain truth, so abundantly familiar 
to the medical world, that the function of none of the 
organs of the body has ever yet been discovered by its 
anatomical structure ; and that as respects even the or- 
gans whose functions are known, no peculiar fitness is 
discoverable between those functions and the organiza- 
tion which produces them — if he is acquainted with this 
truth, and asserts the contrary, for the purposes of de- 
ception, the task of apportioning to him the measure of 
reprobation he deserves, is left for the present to the 
conception of others. I am unwilling to express it in 
words. 

I ask Dr. Sewall to inform rne frankly, whether he 
honestly believes, that he can tell, from its anatomical 
structure, ivhy the simplest piece of vital organization 
produces the kind of action and issue, which observa- 
tion assures us it does produce ? Can he thus tell why an 
acorn produces an oak, and not a hickory ? or why a 
walnut produces a walnut-tree, and not a chestnut, or 
an elm ? Can he tell from its structure and organization, 
why the egg of a turky produces a turky, and not a buf- 
falo? or why the egg of a goose does not produce a 
shark or a grizzly bear? or, stronger still, why it may not 
produce even a Professor of Anatomy ? Can he tell why 
the liver secretes bile rather than pancreatic liquor ? or 
the kidneys urine, rather than saliva ? Can he tell why 
a muscle contracts? or why it is not instrumental in 
sensation, in place of a nerve? Can he tell from the 
structure even of the heart itself what must be of necessi- 
ty its functions and uses ? No, he cannot. Long before 
the discovery of the circulation of the blood, the struc- 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 65 

ture and mechanism of that organ were known, as ac- 
curately as they are at present. But functions and uses 
very far from the true ones, were attributed to it by the 
anatomists and physiologists of the day. 

It will be understood that I here allude not to the 
mechanical, but to the organic structure of the parts con- 
cerned. Since the discovery of the circulation of the 
blood, that a fitness of the valvular structure of the 
heart and veins for the performance of that process is 
perceptible, cannot be denied. It is even probable that 
the knowledge of the veinous valves, which he had deri- 
ved from his preceptor Fabricius ab Aquapendente, led 
Harvey to the discovery of the circulation. Still it was 
observation alone — I mean the actual perception of the 
functional action of the part that completed the work, and 
immortalized the discoverer. But neither Dr. Sewall, 
nor any other anatomist or physiologist can discover the 
shadow of fitness between the vital contraction and dila- 
tion of the heart, and its minute anatomy. From any 
knowledge he possesses of such anatomy, he cannot 
render the slightest reason, why the heart should not 
perform the function of the liver or even of the brain, as 
well as that which it does perform. So consummately 
empty and arrogant is his pretension of being able to 
" demonstrate " from its " structure," the unfitness of 
the latter organ to perform the offices assigned to it by 
Phrenology ! 

That there exists an essential and immutable relation 
between the minute organization of every distinct part 
of the body, whether it be muscle or gland, membrane 
or blood-vessel, and its mode of action, is necessarily 
true ; but it is equally so, that that relation has not yet 

6* 



66 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

been detected. No ; the functions of all our organs, 
as far as they are known, have been discovered, I say, 
not by anatomical researches into the minutiae of the 
structure of dead bodies, but by observations on living 
bodies. And, in many if not most cases, that observa- 
tion may be made as effectually by men who know no- 
thing of organs, except their existence and location, as 
by those who are intimately acquainted with their struc- 
ture. Every one knows that the eye sees, the ear hears, 
the tongue tastes, and the nose smells, and that the fin- 
gers are the seat and instruments of touch. It is almost 
as generally known, that the lungs are concerned in re- 
spiration, the stomach in the digestion of food, and the 
liver in the secretion of bile. But the infant in his cradle 
knows as well why these things are so, as the ablest an- 
atomist and physiologist in existence. 

If this, moreover, is true, as respects the simpler or- 
gans of the body, much more so is it, in relation to the 
more complex ones. Wherefore is it then that Dr. 
Sewall alleges the notorious fallacy and monstrous ab- 
surdity, of being able to " show whether Phrenology be 
reconcilable to the anatomical structure and organization 
of the brain V 1 Just as easily can he tell, by an inspec- 
tion of the nose, whether its possessor be a christian or 
a pagan ; or by an examination of the great toe, under 
what form of the horoscope its owner was born. 

Will Professor Sewall so far oblige his less enlightened 
contemporaries, as to inform them, what sort of cerebral 
structure is suitable, and what sort is not suitable for the 
production of the organ of Benevolence — of Veneration 
^— of Firmness — of Hope — of Ideality — or even of 
SecretivenesS) whose excess leads to deception and jug- 



ANTlPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 67 

glery ; with the operations of the last of which his ac- 
quaintance is intimate. The Professor is doubtless pre- 
pared to give this information ; else how can he show, 
whether Phrenology is " reconcilable " or irreconcilable 
" with the anatomical structure and organization of the 
brain." In truth, he knows but very little about the 
brain, notwithstanding the following pedantic and dog- 
matical paragraph : 

" The fact of the existence of the horizontal mem- 
brane called the tentorium, separating the superior from 
the inferior part of the brain, as well as the arrangement 
of the lateral ventricles, the corpus callosum, the fornix, 
and other parts, clearly show the absurdity of the idea 
of organs as described by phrenologists. The notion, 
then, of the division of the brain into phrenological or- 
gans is entirely hypothetical ; is not sustained by dis- 
section, and is utterly inconsistent with its whole forma- 
tion." 

This is a mere "clap-trap ," as empty and fallacious, 
as it is conceited and artful. It is designed, I mean, by 
Dr. Sewall, to secure to himself a character and conse- 
quence with the public, which he does not deserve, by 
an affectation of knowledge which he does not possess. 
It is instinct, moreover, from beginning to end, with a 
spirit of insolence and misrepresentation. It is not true, 
as he asserts, that the tentorium separates the superior 
from the inferior portion of the brain, in other words, the 
cerebrum from the cerebellum, in such a way as to in- 
terfere in the slightest degree with the doctrines of 
Phrenology. Nor, as far as I am informed on the sub- 
ject, has any antiphrenologist, other than Dr. Sewall, 
ever made the assertion. No matter, however, whether 



68 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

others have made it or not. Nature does not sanction 
it in her structure and general arrangement of the parts. 
It has not, therefore, I repeat, the slightest foundation 
in truth. The opening in the tentorium for the passage 
of cerebral matter is amply sufficient for the purposes of 
Phrenology. Nor, whether they be considered sepa- 
rately, or in their united influence, do the " lateral ven- 
tricles, the corpus callosum, the fornix," or any other 
portion of the brain, offer the slightest objection to the 
truths of the science. If Dr. Sewall is ignorant of this, 
it is because he is equally ignorant of the principles of 
Phrenology and the structure of the brain. No wonder, 
therefore, that he cannot perceive their relation to each 
other. I need hardly add, that the insolence of the 
paragraph quoted consists in its author's rude imputation 
of" absurdity " to a body of men who are immeasurably 
above him in every attribute that constitutes an element 
of human greatness and merit. If I treat the Professor 
without much observance, he may look for the cause, 
with a certainty of finding it, in his own repeated and 
reprehensible violations of truth, and his coarse discour- 
tesies toward phrenologists. I shall only further observe 
in this place, that his entire exposition of the human 
brain is as superficial and flimsy a production of the 
kind, as I have ever examined. A student of medicine, 
who could not in a single week, learn to give one equally 
valuable, should retire from the profession to some trade 
or pursuit more nearly on a level with his humble abili- 
ties. If Professor Sewall lectured on anatomy no more 
correctly and instructively than he writes on it, no won- 
der that the medical school he held his appointment in 
failed to prosper. 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 69 

The Professor's references to Haller, Wrisberg, So- 
emmering, Blumenbach, and Cuvier, and his quotation 
from the writings of the latter, respecting the compara- 
tive size of the human brain, have been made and re- 
peated by antiphrenologists, until they are reduced to 
the condition of the veriest common-place. Nor have 
they in reality any more weight or relevancy, as evidence 
either for or against the doctrines of Phrenology, than 
the same amount of matter, extracted at random from 
the Pilgrim's Progress, or the Tale of a Tub. As re- 
spects himself, their effect is two-fold and antithetical. 
While they probably excite toward him the admiration 
of uninformed antiphrenologists ; they certainly awaken 
contempt and pity in the minds of those of an opposite 
character. 

It is matter of regret to me that Dr. Sewall has 
deemed it necessary to make an effort to increase the 
influence and authority of his own notions, as an anti- 
phrenologist, by a reference to the sentiments of Pro- 
fessor Warren, of Boston. In the capacity of a sur- 
geon and a scholar, a gentleman and a high-minded 
member of society, Professor Warren has few equals. 
But, in his relation to Phrenology, I cannot speak of 
him in terms so elevated. His writings show, that in 
that science his knowledge is very limited. That in 
fact he has never made it a serious study, without which 
no man, be his intellect what it may, can thoroughly 
master it. His authority in it, therefore, is correspond- 
ingly without weight. That the Professor was formerly 
in the ranks of antiphrenology, is true. But I am far 
from being convinced that he is there at present. I am 
inclined to believe that a farther acquaintance with the 



70 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

science has done not a little toward reconciling him 
to its doctrines. My uncertainty as to his precise pos- 
ture at present, arises from the sentiments contained in 
a paper read by him, at the last meeting of the British 
Scientific Association, in Liverpool. In one part of his 
paper, relating to the skulls of an aboriginal people, 
taken from an ancient mound in the Mississippi Valley, 
he remarks : 

" There was (in the form of the skull) less extension 
of forehead than in the European head, but it resembled 
it ; the elevation of the forehead being equal to the 
Cancasian race. The vertex also was uncommonly 
elevated. The seat of the organ of Veneration seemed 
to be very much developed, and it was evident that they 
were a very religious nation; for there was evidence 
that they made many sacrifices." 

The sentiments here expressed, savour strongly 
of those of a phrenologist. So do the following. 
Speaking of the form of the Peruvian skull, Professor 
Warren further says : 

" 1 perceived that the organ of Constructiveness was 
peculiarly developed in all these heads ;" and that peo- 
ple were devoted to certain kinds of building, and other 
sorts of mechanical pursuits. Evidence of their Con- 
structiveness still exists in the ancient monuments which 
abound in their country. So far as these extracts avail, 
Professor Warren is a Phrenologist. In a subsequent 
part of his paper, however, the Professor holds a lan- 
guage at variance with this. Discoursing of the skulls 
of a " flat-headed" people, which he had in his posses- 
sion ; in other words, of Carib skulls, he observes : 

" I have the head of a celebrated chief, who had a 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 71 

most extraordinarily flattened forehead, and he was 
known to have remarkable talent. In fact, no person 
was thought of any consequence in that country (the 
country of the Carib) unless he possessed a flat head." 

So openly are these two extracts at war with each 
other, that they may be fairly regarded as holding their 
author in a state of neutrality. If the Phrenologists are 
forbidden by them to lay claim to him ; so unquestiona- 
bly are the antiphrenologists. In the main, therefore, 
whatever may have been the cast of Professor Warren's 
opinions, at a former period, Dr. Sewall cannot strength- 
en himself and his cause, by the authority of that gen- 
tleman at present. The case, however, of the flattened 
skull of an Indian chief " remarkable for talent," of 
which Professor Warren speaks, calls, perhaps, for a 
few farther remarks. 

The chief I say was of the Caribs, a nation now 
nearly, if not quite, extinct, of whose general history we 
know but little, and of their individual history nothing 
at all. We learn, indeed, chiefly by tradition, that, as a 
people, they were a personation of ferocity, savagism, 
and revolting brutality. Precisely as a phrenologist would 
infer from the size and shape af their heads, their intellect 
was extremely limited, being, in common with that of the 
inferior animals, the product almost alone of their percep- 
tive organs ; morality was still more dismally want- 
ing in them ; while their courage was fearless, their 
cruelty and thirst for blood insatiable, and their Secre- 
tiveness, Covetiveness, and other animal propensities on 
the same scale. So signally true is all this, and so strik- 
ingly and forcibly is it indicated by their developments, 
that teachers of Phrenology are in the uniform habit of 



72 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

exhibiting the Carib head in verification ef their doc- 
trines. So warlike and indomitable were the Caribs* 
that they could not be subdued. They were therefore 
extinguished. Of cougars, panthers, and tigers, the 
same is true — not however on account of their high 
intellect ; but of their fierce and intractable animality. 
And the Caribs were the tigers of the Indian race. 
Thay had faculties for battle, stratagem, and rapacity ; 
but not for knowledge. 

Thus far of the Carib tribe. And our intelligence 
even here is defective and dim. Of Carib individuals, 
whether chiejs or commoners, our information is neces- 
sarily far more restricted. Here even tradition fails to 
instruct us. As respects this subject, the entire tab- 
let of our knowledge is blank ; and every one maxj and 
does write on it as rumour dictates or fancy prompts. 

I am compelled to believe then, that Professor War- 
ren's information respecting the "talent" of the flat-head- 
ed chief is extremely scanty in its amount, and doubtful in 
its character. How can it be otherwise ? The chief lived 
warred, and died, in the battle-field or his cave, many 
centuries ago — perhaps long before a Caucasian foot 
had placed its print on the shore of the western world ; 
and when certainly no pen was employed, nor probably 
other means used, to delineate his character for intellect, 
or to record his actions. 

Whence then I ask again, has professor Warren de- 
rived his knowledge of the "remarkable talent" of the 
Carib chief] And I reply myself, without hesitation, 
that it is not from any authentic source. It is from tra- 
dition at best ; and that of a very " dim-green light." 
Nor is this all. 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 73 

In giving character to a chief, in savage life, talents 
for knowledge avail but little. Bodily activity? strength, 
and hardihood, daring courage and brute ferocity do 
infinitely more. These indeed are almost exclusively 
the attributes of the savage leader. Hence a brave and 
a chief are nearly the same. A sachem in the council- 
house, and a chief in the field are different beings. 
Black- Hawk was a chief. And had he never visited 
the United States, he would have been supposed and 
reported to be a man of talent. In truth he ivas so re- 
ported. But a personal knowledge of him dissipated 
the illusion. He was a brutal daring savage — and no- 
thing more. The grade of his intellect was low, and 
its compass narrow. His followers who accompanied 
him on his visit, surpassed him not a little in intellect ; 
yet he was their chief, and they obeyed him. His 
head was not indeed flat — was not a Carib-head. 
But it approached that figure. His forehead was nar- 
row, low, and retreating. And the same is true of 
many of the chiefs, whose likenesses are contained in 
the " History of the Indian Tribes of North America," 
now in the course of publication in Philadelphia. To 
close this discussion. The Carib chief, of whose skull 
Professor Warren speaks, might have been a man re- 
markable for talent, in a nation of" flat-heads ;" but he 
would not have been so in a nation of " round-heads ;" 
had that nation been composed of Caucasians. Nor, until 
the laws of nature change, in relation to the powers of the 
human mind, is it possible for an individual with a low, 
narrow, and retreating forehead, to be intellectually great. 
No well established instance of the kind moreover, has 
ever yet occurred. And I regret sincerely, that a man of 
7 



74 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

Professor Warren's standing should have given the 
sanction of his name to so palpable an error. 

I respectfully ask the professor, whether he has ever 
known a man with a head " almost as flat as a pancake " 
(his own expression on the subject) possessed of " re- 
markable talent 1" I mean intellectual talent. He will 
not reply affirmatively. Has he ever seen a man with 
such a head, whose intellect was not the counterpart of 
his forehead — low, flat, and meagre ? Neither will he 
answer this question in the affirmative. I, on the con- 
trary, confidently answer it for him in the negative. 
Such an incongruous phenomenon has never met his 
eye. 

Suppose the Professor were introduced into an as- 
sembly composed of " Flat-heads," sugar-loaf heads, 
"round heads," and men with well formed and large 
sized Caucasian heads, and requested, without putting 
any questions to them, or making any inquiries respect- 
ing them, to choose from among them an individual of 
" remarkable talent." Suppose such a case ; would he 
make his choice from among the "flat-heads'?" No. 
The sugar loaf heads ? No. The round heads? No. 
Like every other observant and judicious man, he 
would choose from among the Caucasians, with large 
and well arched heads, and lofty, bold, and expanded 
foreheads. And his choice w 7 ould be creditable to his 
sagacity and judgment. None indeed but a " flat head " 
would choose differently ; and he is flat in all things, 
except animality. In that he is full. 

Dr. Sewall appeals to Professor Warren for another 
fact, which calls, I think, for a few remarks. 

" One individual who was most distinguished for the 



JlNTIPHRENOLOGY unmasked. 75 

variety and extent of his native talent, says Dr. War- 
ren, had, it was ascertained after death, an uncommonly 
small brain." 

Not having Professor Warren's work, referred to in 
this paragraph, now before me, I cannot assert that Dr. 
Sewall's statement is inaccurate. But I strongly sus- 
pect it to be so. The Doctor, I greatly fear, has mis- 
taken Professor Warren's precise meaning ; or he is at 
his old tricks again — garbling, mutilating, or in some 
shape changing another writer's expression, to make it 
suit the better his own purposes. But here I may per- 
haps be wrong ; and Dr. Sewall may for once be right. 
His correctness however, supposing it to exist, avails 
him nothing to tho discredit of Phrenology. 

Whatever may be the size of their heads, all men, not 
accidentally mutilated, or defective in the original con- 
formation of their brains, have the same number of cere- 
bral organs. Provided therefore his brain be well pro- 
portioned, and his temperament good, a man with a 
small head may apply himself to as great a " variety " of 
pursuits, as a man with a large head. And he may pro- 
secute them with as much activity, but not with as much 
power. As relates to mental operations, the difference 
in the import of these two terms is not sufficiently re- 
garded. That difference is radical as well as great. 
There may be great mental activity, with but little 
power ; and great mental power, with but little activity. 
The activity of the racer, the greyhound, and the swal- 
low, surpasses the activity of the dray-horse, the New- 
foundland dog, and the condor; but their power is 
greatly inferior. In like manner, the activity of the 
mental faculties of woman is greater than that of the 



76 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

faculties of man ; but their power is less. Yet the fe- 
male may manifest as great a " variety " of talent as the 
male. And she does so. 

By the existence of a great variety or flexibility of na- 
tive talent then, in an individual with a small brain ? 
Phrenology loses nothing. Nor, of course, does anti- 
phrenology gain any thing. And, as to the phrase 
" extent of native talent," I am ignorant of its precise 
signification. I can attach to it no definite meaning. 
And that is one reason, why I suspect Dr. Sewall of in- 
accuracy. I doubt greatly whether Professor Warren 
has used the expression. He is a scholar, familiar with 
the true import of words, and therefore writes correctly; 
while, as might be easily shown, Dr. SewalPs style is 
incorrect, many of his forms of expression being indefi- 
nite, and difficult to be understood. If however by 
" extent of talent " he meant great compass or depth, 
elevation or power of intellect, the expression involves a 
mistake. No man of " an tmcommonly small brain" or 
even possessing a brain of but common size, has ever 
yet been an intellectual giant — a Csesar, a Napoleon, 
a Bacon, or a Franklin. And as soon shall a dwarf in 
frame equal a Hercules in achievement, as such an un- 
natural occurrence take place. If Professor Warren 
has really made the statement, as reported by Dr. SewalF, 
I respectfully ask him, whether the individual with 
" an uncommonly small brain" possessed the gigantic 
intellect, which once gave eminence to a Dexter dead, 
and now gives eminence to a Webster living? That 
his reply will be negative, I feel as confident, as if it 
were this moment sounding in my ear. To add as 
much as possible to the weight of Professor Warren's 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED, 77 

testimony against Phrenology, Dr. Sewall prefaces his 
adduction of that testimony with the following high- 
toned assertion, 

"Professor Warren, of Boston, has probably enjoyed 
as great opportunities for dissecting the brains of literary 
and intellectual men of high grade, and of comparing 
these with the brains of men in the lower walks of life, 
as any anatomist of our country, if not of the age/' 

As a matter of personal knowledge, I am not author- 
ized to contradict this. I can find men however of 
full and ripe intelligence, unquestioned veracity, and 
high standing, who have been intimate with Professor 
Warren's professional career, for the last fifteen or 
twenty years, who will contradict it. They are pre- 
pared to say, that the Professor's experience in the sort 
of inquiry and comparison alluded to is exceedingly 
limited. They are ready to aver, that although Profes- 
sor Warren has written against Phrenology, he has never 
devoted himself^ to any extent, to phrenological re- 
searches. That,, in a special manner, he has not ap- 
plied himself closely and strenuously to the ascertain- 
ment of the difference in size and character between the 
brains of men of high, and men of ordinary talents. 
More particularly still ; that he has never been suffi- 
ciently observant of the relative size of the different 
compartments of the brain, in men of different grades 
of intellect. And, as respects the truth of phrenological 
doctrines, that is a point of superlative moment. In 
two individuals similar in temperament, the brain may 
be of the same size, and yet the intellect of one of them 
feeble, and that of the other comparatively strong. The 

reason is plain. In the latter the intellectual organs pre^ 

7* 



78 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

dominate, and the animal in the former. Or, the man of 
weak intellect may have a phlegmatic and dull, and he 
of the strong a nervous and highly elastic temperament. 
Or, though neither be a man of education, in the com- 
mon acceptation of the term, the more intelligent may 
have exercised his intellectual faculties in the highest 
degree. As respects the principles of Phrenology, 
these are matters of supreme importance ; and until 
Professor Warren shall have strictly inquired into them, 
which there is good reason to suspect he has never 
done, his authority, whether for the science or against 
it, will have but little weight. Whatever may have been 
his " opportunities " then " for dissecting the brains of 
literary and intellectual men of high grade, and of com- 
paring these with the brains of men in the lower walks 
of life " — whatever may have been his " opportunities" 
I say to this effect, they have not been sedulously and ad- 
vantageously improved by him. He will not himself say 
that they have been thus improved — whatever Dr. 
Sewall may say for him. As respects the truth of Phre- 
nology therefore, or his own improvement in the know- 
ledge of it, he might as well not have enjoyed them. 

Professor Warren I trust will take no exception at the 
freedom of these remarks. They are made under the 
influence of the highest respect for him. But, as the 
weight of his name is thrown, as I believe, into the 
scale of error, I have deemed it my duty to counter-^ 
balance it, as far as possible, by the weight of facts, and 
fair-drawn inferences. Dr. Sewall concludes his re- 
marks, under this head of his subject, with the follow- 
ing clause : 

" I feel authorized to say, that the experience of emi* 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 79 

nent anatomists of all times and countries, ivho havepaid 
attention to the subject, will be found in strict accord- 
ance with that of Dr. Warren." 

It is difficult to say, whether this sweeping assertion 
should be pronounced an equivouque, a juggle, or a bold 
misrepresentation. Be its name however what it may, 
it throws a veil over truth, by pretending to more than 
its author can prove. The qualification contained in the 
phrase, "who have paid attention to the subject," is 
quite adroitly, because perhaps evasively introduced. 
The reason is plain. It may be designed as a covert, 
behind which to skulk, as a protection from fair and 
manly contest. The " subject" alluded to is, whether 
the brains of very strong-minded men, or those of men 
of ordinary minds, have been found, by strict compari- 
son, to be uniformly of the same size, or of different 
sizes'? — and if differing in size, which predominates 
most frequently ? or is the frequency of predominance 
between them about equal? 

Such, I say, is the " subject " of inquiry. And I ask 
Dr. Sewall, what " eminent anatomists " of any time or 
country, except Gall and Spurzheim, and their followers* 
have actually paid to this subject the attention it de- 
serves ? — the attention, I mean, absolutely necessary to 
a satisfactory decision ? I ask him to name even one, 
who has thus rigidly and faithfully inquired and com- 
pared, and who still coincides in opinion with Professor 
Warren. And I confidently believe, and even assert 
that he cannot do so. He cannot name a single anato- 
mist, of real eminence, who has thus examined and thus 
decided. He can easily cite the names of men called 
anatomists, who concur with Professor Warren in asser- 



SO PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, ANI> 

tion. But neither are they " eminent ;" nor have their 
inquiries been of the right cast. They have inquired, 
not to find truth; but to find fault — as Dr. Sewall hinK 
self has done. Their testimony, therefore, is as value- 
less as his. I know not the name of a single anatomist 
of authority and standing, who does not dissent from 
the views of Professor Warren ; provided he has tho- 
roughly examined the subject. 

Taking his departure from this point of " Lecture II," 
Dr. Sewall threads his way through a wilderness of er- 
rors and misstatements, the most gross and palpable. 
Of these, time permits me to notice but a few. The 
cranium, he says, p. 45, is " thin in childhood, thicker in 
adult life, and becomes thin again in old age." These 
words are not his ; but their meaning is ; and that pre- 
cisely. And the statement is incorrect. The skull 
does not become thinner in old age than it was in the 
prime of life. When any change in it occurs in ad- 
vanced life, it grows thicker and firmer, by a pro- 
cess familiar to every physiologist — to every one, cer- 
tainly, who deserves the title. This, I mean, is the 
usual course of things. When the skull becomes thin- 
ner in old age, as it sometimes perhaps may, the change 
is irregular, and is the product of some deviation froni 
health and nature. 

In p. 49, the Professor asserts that phrenologists 
" estimate the amount of intellect by the size of the 
head." This is untrue. " Size" as heretofore men-, 
tioned, enters into the computation but as a single ele* 
ment. And the number of elements is at least four — 
I think them five. 

Does any one wish to banquet on a puffy, frothy, ilksa^ 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 81 

voured dish or two of rhetoric ? If so, let him turn to p. 
50, and have his desire. He will there find a whole repast 
of rodomontade, as rare and exquisite, as ever mental 
cook did up. In the first platter, is served up, in tempting 
gastronomic style, the brain of Reubens — in the next 
that of Humboldt — then, of Wren — of Douglass — of 
Simpson — of Dean Swift — of Chatham — of Colum- 
bus — of Newton — of Volney — and, in the form of a 
dessert, the wit-spiced, rich, and racy brain of the Great 
Unknown ! ! — Seriously ; this is one of the most taste- 
less and tawdry, flaunting and lubberly dashes in rheto- 
ric I have any where witnessed. It reminds one of the 
matchless sublimity of the following stanza of an un- 
fledged aspiring son of Parnassus : 

Li The sun's perpendicular height 
Had illumined the depth of the sea; 

And the fishes beginning to sweat, 
Cried d — n it ; how hot we shall be !" 

Speaking of the effects of injuries done to the brain, 
Dr. Sewall has deemed it important to refer to the nur- 
sery-tales of Ferrier and Rennels on that subject, though 
they have been repeated, and satisfactorily answered, 
dozens of times, until their groundlessness and absurd- 
ity are common-place and notorious. On this point the 
Doctor surpasses even himself, in the recklessness of 
his misrepresentation, or the depth of his ignorance. 
His words are as follows : 

"In many of these cases, (of injuries done to the 
brain) blindness and deafness have been produced, mo- 
tion and sensation destroyed, and all the intellectual fa- 
culties suspended ; but there has not been a destruction 



82 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

of a particular faculty of the mind, while its other powers 
have remained untouched." P. 58. 

If the Professor believes the latter part of this para- 
graph, his ignorance is deplorable ; if he does not, his 
mendacity is detestable. He may take his choice. To 
one charge or the other he must submit. As an igno- 
ramus or an impostor he hangs on the dilemma. 

No instance of the " destruction of a particular faculty 
of the mind, while its other powers have remained un- 
touched !" So far is this from being true, that the in- 
stances to this effect on record are numerous ; and 
scores of them have been seen, which are not recorded. 
As far as my observation and inquiries have extended, 
the five faculties which most frequently suffer from in- 
juries of the brain, while the others continue sound, are 
Alimentiveness, Amativeness, Language, Calculation, 
and Eventuality. The cases, in which a temporary sus- 
pension or impairment, or the entire extinction of these 
has been produced, by lesions of the brain, the other fa- 
culties remaining sound, are so numerous and unequi- 
vocal, that their denial by Dr. Sewall is actually amazing. 
Nor is the solitary derangement of Form, Size, and 
Colour, through cerebral injuries, by any means uncom- 
mon. For ample and satisfactory information on these 
points, I refer to the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal, 
and to sundry other productions by members of the 
Phrenological school. Into that school, moreover, I 
earnestly advise Professor Sewall to enter as a pupil, 
and con, at least, his horn-book, before he ventures to 
write on Phrenology again. Though it is not probable 
that he will even then open any new mines of knowledge 
to the world, he may, perhaps, make a less disgraceful 



ANTiPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 83 

exposure of his own ignorance of the treasures contained 
in those which have been opened by others. 

On what he calls the " Theory of the plurality of 
cerebral organs," the Doctor attempts, page 58, to be 
sarcastic and witty. But here again, as is his custom, 
he plays the daw, by appearing in borrowed feathers. 
Every thought he expresses is derived from some of his 
predecessors in antiphrenology. He is himself still the 
41 barren fig-tree" encumbering the ground. Let me 
seriously ask him, on what principle, except that of the 
11 plurality of cerebral organs," does he explain mono- 
mania? But I take back the question. To ask him to 
explain anything in Phrenology, is like begging fire 
from the ice-berg, or water from the flint. So utter is 
his ignorance of the science, that he has neither shape 
nor shadow of explanation to give. — But throught his 
slough of petty blunders and misrepresentations I must 
wade no longer. The task has become loathsome to 
me. Turning from it therefore, " for once, for all, and 
ever," I enter on the exposure of another higher and 
more daring effort of Professor Sewall to deceive — 
and that shall be the last. And it is perhaps the most 
flagitious the Professor has made. 

The object aimed at in this stratagem, is to convince 
the public that the size and form of the head give no 
valid evidence of the form and size of the brain which 
it contains. This objection to Phrenology, like every 
other that his artifice and industry have been able to 
adduce, has been replied to, times almost innumerable, 
and abundantly refuted in all its bearings. The only 
thing new therefore in Dr. Sewall's presentation of it is 
the unprecedented falsity of the means he has employed 



84 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

to give it weight, and the matchless audacity, with 
which he has pressed them. 

This objection professes to rest on three points ; the 
different thickness of the same skull in different parts ; 
the difference in the thickness of the skulls of different 
individuals ; and the different sizes of the frontal sinus. 
Though it is true that, to a certain extent, these differ- 
ences do exist ; it is equally true that, in the average of 
skulls, that extent is extremely limited. So entirely 
inconsiderable is it, as to have no appreciable influence 
in the result of the computation. By Gall, Spurzheim, 
and other phrenological writers, this truth has been 
amply demonstrated. Better still ; it is demonstrated 
by skulls themselves ; as every one may learn from a 
careful examination of them. By such examination it 
will appear, that the difference in these points, as relates 
to healthy adult Caucasian skulls, taken in mass, is not 
more than the twelfth of an inch — perhaps not so much. 
In a vast majority of skulls the frontal sinus is so small, 
as to place no obstacle in the path of the skilful Phre- 
nologist, in his attempt to ascertain the size of the brain, 
by an examination of the head. It is not, I mean, 
beyond the discernment of such a Phrenologist to dis- 
criminate between cases, in which form and character 
may be given to the orbiter region by development of 
brain, or irregularity of bone. To those who have 
made themselves acquainted with the subject, these are 
but truisms. If they be otherwise to Dr. Sewall, he 
will find the cause, provided he search for it, in his own 
lack of information on the subject. 

Of the healthy skulls of adult Caucasians, the 
average thickness is about one fifth of an inch. And, 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 85 

except in a few inconsiderable points, this is uniform 
throughout the skull. Here again, while I refer to the 
works of Gall, Tiedeman, John Bell and other distin- 
guished anatomists for concurring testimony, as to the 
thickness of crania, I appeal to an examination of 
skulls themselves, as the only infallible test of the truth 
of my statement. And to such test I confidently trust 
it. As a general rule, the difference in the thickness 
of the crania of different adult individuals does not I 
repeat vary more than from half a line to a line from 
this standard, or from one another, and rarely so 
much. The crania of children are thinner, while, as 
already mentioned, those of persons advanced in life, 
are usually somewhat thicker and harder. Such are 
the facts which nature, when the part is in a healthy 
condition, steadily presents. Let them be contrasted with 
the counterfeit facts presented by Dr. Sewall. And if that 
gentleman can witness the contrast without shame and 
confusion, to say nothing of the neverdying worm of re- 
morse, I envy him neither his conscience, nor his regard 
for the approbation and esteem of the votaries of honour, 
and the lovers of truth. 

His pamphlet contains seven engravings or lithographs 
of skulls, running from plate II. to plate VIII. inclusive. 
These, with a studied and cool duplicity, which might 
be well called detestable, he has palmed on the public, 
as a fair specimen of the average character of the hu- 
man cranium, in respect to positive and relative thick- 
ness, and to the dimensions of the frontal sinus. Yet I 
venture to say that another group of seven such skulls, 
he has never seen. Nor can he collect such another 



8 



86 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

perhaps in seven years' research. I am not myself 
entirely unacquainted with human crania. For twenty 
years past I have been in the habit of examining care- 
fully all I could have access to, as well in anatomical 
museums as elsewhere. And nothing even approaching 
in character Dr. SewalPs seven conspirators have I been 
able to find. I bestow on them that ominous and 
odious name ; because, by the agency of their employer, 
they are made to conspire against truth and science, 
conscience and every other praiseworthy feeling. Dr. 
Sewall has collected and used them, on the principle 
of suborning and bribing witnesses, or packing juries — 
that he may derive from them false testimony, and an 
unrighteous decision. And he has succeeded. His 
seven plates are so many conscienceless stratagems to 
delude. There is not among them the representation 
of a single natural average skull. In point of thickness, 
plate VIII. comes nearest the truth. But even in that 
the thickness is not correct, and the frontal sinus is 
vastly too large. It is on account of its deceptiveness 
in the latter respect, that Dr. Sewall has had that cra- 
nium delineated. He wishes to impose on his readers 
the groundless belief that sinuses so spacious frequently 
occur; whereas it is doubtful whether they occur in 
one skull out of every ten millions ; and in healthy 
skulls they probably never occur, because they are un- 
natural. I have seen them a few times in the skulls of 
idiots, which are always irregular in some way, on ac- 
count of the irregular development of their brains. To 
speak more definitely on this point. 

The reader is requested to bear in mind, that, as here* 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 87 

tofore stated, the average thickness of the human skull 
is about the fifth (hoo-tenths) of an inch, and to com- 
pare this with the following admeasurements : 

The thickness of the skull, represented in plate II. is 
about the eighth of an inch ; that in plate III. a little 
more than threz tenths of an inch ; plate IV. about five 
tenths; plate \ r , six tenths; VI. eight tenths; VII. a 
full inch or more; VIII. thickness nearly natural, but 
frontal sinuses enormous. 

From this representation, brief as it is, the studied 
and reprehensible effort of Professor Sewall to deceive 
must be obvious to every one, His professed object is 
to give, in a series of plates, a fair and natural delinea- 
tion of the average character of the human skull. And 
to effect this, he has had executed drawings of seven 
skulls, each of them in some way deformed and unna- 
tural; and most of them bearing indubitable marks of 
disease. The cranium represented in plate VII. be- 
longed to the cabinet of Spurzheim. I saw and ex- 
amined it both in Paris and Boston. It is, if I remem- 
ber correctly, the skull of a maniac. But whether cor- 
rect in this or not, I am perfectly so in stating, that, in 
his lectures, Spurzheim exhibited it as a diseased skull. 
And as such, it must appear to every one acquainted 
with anatomy — Dr. Sewall not excepted. That gen- 
tleman informs us, that he procured from Professor 
Smith, of Baltimore, the skulls delineated in plates IV. 
V. and VI. And I doubt not that Professor Smith 
keeps them in his cabinet, as specimens certainly of 
unnatural, and probably of diseased crania. The bones 
themselves may not be diseased. But they are preter- 
naturally thickened, in consequence of derangement in 



88 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

the viscus they enclosed. Such occurrences are fre- 
quent in cases of long continued madness and other 
chronic cerebral affections. The brain diminishes in 
size and the skull thickens ; changes which had evi- 
dently taken place in the brains and crania represented 
by Dr. Sewall, in plates IV. V. VI. and VII. The 
brains had been reduced in size by some morbid affec- 
tion. In consequence of this, the internal table of the 
cranium had retreated from the external, to prevent the 
production of a vacuum, and a greater amount of diploe 
having been interposed, the whole had grown thicker. 
In the fashionable language of the day, a larger amount 
of blood flowing to the bones of the crania, they had 
become hypertrophied. I have several specimens of 
such changes in the skulls of maniacs. Even Dr. 
Sewall himself has not the hardihood to proclaim his 
plates a fair representation of the average character of 
the human cranium. No ; when interrogated on the 
subject by his class, instead of a manly avowal or disa- 
vowal, he plays the Jesuit, and equivocates in his reply. 
The following are his own words on the subject : 

" You have asked, gentlemen, if the specimens of 
crania delineated in the plates, were not extreme cases ; 
of irregular structure, and to be regarded as exceptions 
to the general rule ? I have already stated, that I pos- 
sess skulls of every intermediate degree of thickness, 
from that of the Waterman (plate II. one eighth of an 
inch thick) to the cast of Spurzheim; and those, also, 
which exhibit the frontal sinuses from the size repre- 
sented in plate VIII. to those which are scarcely per- 
ceptible ; and, by visiting the anatomical cabinets of our 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 89 

country, the same variations will be seen in abundance." 
— pp. 52, 53. 

The first part of this extract, I repeat, is an equivoque 
— a Jesuitical reply — " a non-committal," practised in* 
deed by the timid and wiley politician ; but which the 
man of science should throw from him, as a stigma alike 
on his character and calling. Yet it may be true. Pro- 
fessor Sewall may have the varieties of crania which he 
says he has. But if so, they are not an accidental pos- 
session. They are not, I mean, the product of pro- 
miscuous acquisition. They have been procured by the 
research and selection of years* And Dr* Sewall has not 
hazarded, I say, nor will he hazard the groundless as- 
sertion, that they are a correct representation of the 
average character of human crania in a natural condition* 
Like the poet's witches, actuated by a spirit of moral cow* 
ardice or duplicity, he has ki paltered about the matter in 
a double sense ;" an act as inconsistent with manliness, 
as with truth and conscience. Bold, open deception is 
less despicable than that which is covert and dastardly; 
on the same ground that mid-day robbery is less con* 
temptible than mid-nigki theft. He whose timidity per- 
mits him to sin only by halves, if not the most atrocious, 
is the most despised of sinners. 

The assertion made in the italicised clause of the 
extract is also unfounded. Such irregularities of cra- 
nia are not to be " seen in abundance," in the m ana* 
tomical cabinets of our country." And if they even 
were, the testimony borne by the fact, would avail Dr. 
Sewall but little. Cabinets are made up too much of 
rarities — of things curious more than of things useful* 
Hence a cranium remarkable for thickness, thinness, oar 



90 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

any other unusual characteristic, will be preserved, 
while dozens of common ones will be thrown away. 
Such is our passion for novelty, and deviations from 
the usual course of things. 

When seriously examined in its character and bearings, 
the conduct of Professor Sewall, in the composition and 
publication of his " Two Lectures," constitutes a prob- 
lem not easily solved. The Professor is a practitioner 
of medicine of some distinction, in the capital of the 
nation ; as a man and a member of society, I am told 
he stands well ; his general associations are good, and 
many of his personal ones of a high order ; to science 
and letters he makes no ordinary pretensions ; in his 
usual deportment he affects great candour and fairness ; 
and I am informed that he is also a professor of reli- 
gion. 

In the midst of these circumstances, each one of 
which ought to serve as a bond, to connect him indisso- 
lubly with truth and honour, that, in disregard of them 
all, he should bring to bear on a philosophical discus- 
sion the intrigues and stratagems of the hustings and 
the ballot box, is in no small degree surprising ; and, 
were he a man of power, I might well say alarming. It 
is a measure unsound in principle, of hateful example, 
subversive of sincerity and uprightness, and, as far as 
its influence may extend, pernicious in its effects. To 
be rendered duly sensible of the truth of this, we have 
only to suppose the pursuit of a similar course by every 
man of standing, and to look calmly on the issue. But 
on a spectacle so appalling it is impossible to look calm- 
ly. The world would be a pandemonium sufficiently 
tormenting to inflict expiatory punishment on its own 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 91 

deepest crimes. Immeasurably worse than the Dark 
Ages, an age of falsehood and its concomitants, would 
prevail. So far as his influence may extend, such is the 
odious tendency of Professor SewalPs conduct. It is 
at war with all that is sacred in itself, and valuable to 
man. If his conscience whisper peace to him, and his 
reputation can sustain itself under this trial, I know not 
what can shake the latter, or awaken to action the worm 
of the former. 

One extract more from the " Two Lectures," and I 
shall take leave of them forever. 

" But in order to render this part of the investigation 
the more satisfactory and conclusive, I have instituted 
a series of experiments, to ascertain the exact amount 
of brain in the skull, compared with its external dimen- 
sions. These experiments were made under the immedi- 
ate inspection, and by the assistance of Thomas P. Jones 
of this city, and Professor Wm. Ruggles of the Columbi- 
an College ; gentlemen whose high scientific character 
assures the utmost accuracy in the results. I am much 
indebted to these gentlemen for the aid they have afford- 
ed me. In the first series of experiments was ascer- 
tained, the volume of each skull, the brain included. 
In the second series, the volume of the brain, or the 
capacity of the cerebral cavity. 

" Then, in order to render the difference in capacity 
more obvious, the volume of each skull, the brain in- 
cluded, was reduced to the dimensions of seventy fluid 
ounces. 

" The table shows the result of these experiments, as 
extended to five of the skulls delineated in the plates. 



92 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

Vol. brain. 
Plate II. 70 oz. 56.23 oz. 

III. " 51.72 

IV. " 46.21 
V. " 34.79 

VII. " 25.33 

" In five adult skulls therefore, of the same external 
dimensions, we have a difference in the amount of brains 
between II. and III. of . . 4.50 oz. 
II. andlY. " . . 10.01, 
II. and V. " • . 21.43. 
II. and VII. " . . 31.89. 

"In this computation we have a difference in the vol- 
ume of brain, contained in two skulls of the same ex- 
ternal dimensions, of 31.89 ; something more than one 
half. These experiments have been extended to a great 
variety of crania, not here delineated ; which confirm 
the above estimate, and show that the external dimen- 
sions of the skull furnish no indication of the amount 
of the brain." 

This is another deliberate and unprincipled effort in 
Dr. Sewall to deceive those who are unversed in the 
knowledge of the human brain. Yet, with all his la- 
boured insidiousness, he has presented no shadow of 
objection to the principles of Phrenology. That he 
possesses two skulls of the same volume — say 70 oz., 
containing brains, the one of 56.22 oz., and the other 
of 25.23 oz. weight, may be true. It may be also true, 
that he possesses the intermediate sized skulls and 
brains to which he refers. But his object is trickishly 
to palm on the public the belief, that these exhibit an 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 93 

average of the comparative difference of size in the 
skulls and brains of healthy adult individuals ; and that is 
not true. He knows it is not. Nor will he hazard the rem- 
nant of his reputation (if any remnant he possesses) by 
openly pronouncing it true. 

The average weight of the brain of the human Cau- 
casian adult, when fairly developed, and in a healthy 
condition, is, I think, about three pounds and three or four 
ounces. Very few exceed this more than from two to 
four ounces. If my recollection serve me, the brain of 
Cuvier weighed four pounds and nine or ten ounces ; 
and the brain of Byron about the same ; so did that of 
Dupuytren — and they were all of extra size. But never 
has there been seen the healthy aud well developed brain 
of a full sized Caucasian adult, which weighed but little 
more than a pound and a half! In attempting the estab- 
lishment of an opposite opinion, our author, I repeat, is 
as sensible as I am that he is violating truth — else his 
ignorance on the subject is worse than idiotic ! 

To show the fallacy and futility of the efforts of Dr. 
Sewall, and all other antiphrenologists, to make it ap- 
pear, that the size and form of the human brain cannot 
be discovered by an examination of the human head, 
let the following experiment be made. 

Let fifty skulls be taken promiscuously and bisected 
— some perpendicularly, and others horizontally. In the 
sections thus produced, as moulds, make casts of bees- 
wax or plaster. This being done, extract the casts, 
and lay them and the cranial sections, in which they 
were formed, disorderly on a table. In this state of 
location, let them be examined even by a boy of ten 
or twelve years old, of common intellect, who was not 



94 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

present at the casting, and who has never seen them 
before ; and he will point immediately to the section 
of skull, in which each or any given cast was formed. 
This experiment I have had made ; the issue was as 
just stated; and I deem it conclusive. And so did 
every one who witnessed it. And so would Dr. Sewall 
were the scales off his eyes. 

Once more. In one respect, plate VIII. is designed 
to practise, and actually does practise on those who are 
unversed in anatomy, as gross a deception, as either of 
the others. Though it represents the bones of the 
cranium of nearly their natural thickness in most places, 
it makes them more than usually uneven in their thick- 
ness ; and the frontal sinuses exhibited in the plate, are 
eminently unnatural. They are four or five times the 
ordinary size of those cavities. Certainly they are by 
far the largest that I have ever seen, Dr. Sewall will 
not have the effrontery to pronounce them natural. He 
knows them to be enormous — far, very far beyond the 
regular and healthy average size. And that is the rea- 
son why he has had them here depicted. His object 
in having the plate prepared was deception — not in- 
struction — the propagation of error — not of truth. 
The stratagem is dishonourable, not to say detestable 
— worthy only of the unhallowed cause it is intended 
to subserve. 

I have never seen frontal sinuses at all approaching 
the dimensions of those represented in plate VIII. ex- 
cept in the crania of idiots, madmen, and perons far 
advanced in years. In the iirst of these the cerebral 
organs lying immediately behind the internal orbiter 
plate, had been originally very small, or entirely want- 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 95 

ing ; while in the two last those organs had been dimin- 
ished by absorption ; in the former from disease, and in 
the latter, as one of the frequent, perhaps usual infirmities 
of old age. But I repeat, that in adult Caucasians, 
healthy and in the prime of life, sinuses of such di- 
mensions do not exist in one cranium in ten mill- 
ions. 

But I must push this protracted and unpleasant dis- 
cussion no farther. Yet protracted as it is, and multi- 
plied and various as are the topics embraced in it, many 
gross errors and scandalous faults in the " Two Lec- 
tures" of Professor Sewall remain untouched. No 
matter. Other pens will demolish some of them ; and 
time, with truth and science as his auxiliaries, will over- 
throw and trample on the rest. As I take neither pride 
nor pleasure therefore, in being their executioner, I 
leave them to perish under these blighting influences, or 
of their own accord, in the deceptiveness of their spirit, 
the trashiness of their matter, and the feebleness of the 
composition, which has ushered them to the world. 
Nor, in the wreck that awaits them, can they fail to 
bury under their ruins whatever of respectability as a 
writer their author had attained. That they will bring 
down on him this full measure of retributive justice, is 
as certain as that we live under a dispensation, where, 
ultimately, truth is destined to triumph over falsehood, 
purity over turpitude, and right over wrong. That Dr. 
Sewall may receive a foretaste of the manner in which 
his reputation will be dealt with, by his long-incubated 
brood, I refer him to Milton's family-picture of Satan, 
Death, and Sin. He will there see depicted, in suita- 



96 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

ble colours, strength, and hatefulness, the issue of a 
studied and stubborn infringement of the commands of 
Heaven. And no trait in the appalling character of 
the fallen arch-angel, was more sinful in itself, or 
more odious in the eye of his offended Creator, than 
his hostility to truth, which procured for him the appel- 
lation of Ihe " Father of Lies." The Doctor I say 
may herein see and contemplate the image of his own 
conduct, in the preparation and publication of his " Two 
Lectures," and the reward that awaits it. 

Shall I be told again, as I have been on former occa- 
sions, in relation to some of my efforts to vindicate 
phrenology and phrenologists from slander, abuse, and 
false imputations, that I am not sufficiently calm and 
courteous in the tone of my reply ? That I give to feel- 
ing too loose a rein, and indulge in terms of resent- 
ment and reprobation toward my antagonists, to such 
an extent, as to awaken public sympathy in their favour, 
excite disapproval and reaction against myself, and 
thus do an injury to the cause I am defending 1 Should 
such a charge be preferred against me, whether by 
friend or foe, my reply is brief. The accusation is un- 
just. Writers, who are themselves discourteous and 
insulting, slanderous in their reports, false in their re- 
presentations, and insidious in the opinions and expla- 
nations they impute to others — who, in fact, adopt all 
means but fair ones, to achieve their own purposes, and 
throw disrepute on their opponents — such writers have 
no claim on courtesy. Not only would the boon be 
gratuitous ; it would be wasted on them. Neither are 
they worthy of it, nor would they place on it the estimate 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 97 

to which it is entitled. And things that are valuable 
should not be prodigally and uselessly lavished on those 
who deserve them not; and who do not know their 
value. The act would be not only incongruous, but 
injudicious and injurious. The moral gratuity thus be- 
stowed would be ascribed by the receiver to timidity, 
affectation, insincerity, or some other discreditable mo- 
tive in the giver. So unworthy would be the return 
made for courteous and respectful replies and comments, 
by the description of writers just referred to. And, as 
far as their works have fallen under my notice, of this 
description is every antiphrenological writer, from the 
first that showered the anathemas of the church on 
Gall in Vienna, in 1796, through the long and wrathful, 
calumnious, malignant, and denouncing train, ending 
with Professor Sewall, in 1837 — forty-one belligerent 
years. And the Professor himself shows, in his lectures, 
as little of becoming respect and observance, as his pre- 
decessors. He has the audacity to impute to the whole 
phrenological corps, a " departure from truth and com- 
mon sense ;" and mendaciously to impute to them al- 
legations and explanations so consummately silly, that, 
if true, they would disgrace even the dullest and most 
illiterate school-boy. From me, therefore, as a phreno- 
logist and a lover of truth, he deserves no courtesy in 
reply ; nor shall he receive any, until he recalls and 
makes amends for his slanders and misstatements against 
the school of philosophy to which I belong, and the sci- 
ence whose doctrines I have endeavoured to defend. 

Personally, I entertain toward Professor Sewall " no 
resentment." Nor do I toward his opinions. He has 

9 



98 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND 

the same right to his opinions that I have to mine. But 
his manner and means, in his attempts to propagate them, 
I do resent. They are steeped in insincerity, and in- 
stinct with a desire to disparage and deceive — to dis- 
parage his opponents, and deceive his readers. They 
are, therefore, immoral and vicious. And vice and im- 
morality of every description ought to be resented. And 
the resentment should be active. It should awaken and 
array every suitable power of the mind against the evils 
that excite it, until they are beaten down and extin- 
guished. And by cool reason, bland persuasion, and 
calm remonstrance, that effect is rarely, if ever, pro- 
duced. The evils in question are set afloat and sus- 
tained by passion of some kind ; if not by the resentful 
and open, by the concealed and insidious, which are 
immeasurably worse. Passion, therefore, must en- 
counter passion, as steel meets stoel, elso the conflict 
is unequal. 

The man who attempts to propagate false opinions 
by unfair and immoral means, must have his conduct 
rendered discomfortable, injurious, and openly discred- 
itable to him, otherwise he will obstinately persist in it. 
And when he becomes so contumacious an offender as 
the antiphrenologists are, he deserves to be crushed, if 
he cannot be reformed ; or suspended on a moral gibbet, 
and made an object at once of abhorrence and mockery. 

The difference between the efficiency and success of 
a cool, reasoning, and persuasive reformer of abuses, 
and eraser of errors and false doctrines, and an impas- 
sioned one, is clearly seen in the different characters, 
modes of action, and degrees of success, of Luther and 



ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED. 99 

Melanctbon. Had the former of these been no more 
impetuous, warm, and resentful, than the latter, the Re- 
formation would not have been achieved by them. In 
the physical economy of our globe, the bolt from the 
thunder-cloud is just as necessary, on suitable occasions, 
as the rain that distills from it, or as the sunbeam from 
the sky. And, in its moral economy, the gleam of re- 
sentment, properly directed, is often much more effec- 
tive in the prevention or removal of mischief, and the 
achievement of good, than the light of reason, or the 
balm of persuasion — or than the union of both. Such 
are my sentiments ; such has been my conduct as a 
phrenologist ; and such shall be my future course in the 
same capacity, as often as any one worthy of notice 
shall cross my path, as rudely and offensively as Pro- 
fessor Sewall has done. 

On the contrary, let the Professor, or any other wri- 
ter, call in question the truth of Phrenology, and discuss 
the subject with the candour, calmness, and courtesy, 
which should always characterize a scientific contro- 
versy ; and, if I reply to him at all, my language, matter, 
and manner, shall be marked with a corresponding ex- 
emption from passion and reproach ; and, as far as I can 
render it so, from every other exceptionable quality. 
Fact and plainness, courtesy and argument, shall be 
alone employed. But they shall be employed with 
whatever of force and efficiency I can bring to the con- 
test. I shall only add, that if, in preparing this vindi- 
cation of a favourite science, a degree of resentment has 
been frequently awakened in me, by the contemplation 
of what I deemed an act to be reprobated, or an impu- 



100 PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED* 

tation to be repelled, that state of mind has never been 
such, as to render me forgetful of my solemn obligation 
on no account intentionally to violate or neglect truth to- 
ward science, nor justice toward man. To the strictest 
scrutiny, therefore, I cheerfully submit the essay I have 
written, and hold myself responsible for all it contains. 



APPENDIX. 



Reese's Humbug. 



It was my intention before I had seen the work, to 
give, in this " Vindication*" a brief analysis accompa- 
nied by an argumentative refutation, of an attack on 
Phrenology, in the " Humbugs of New- York, " by 
" David Meredith Reese, M. D., " of that city. A 
glance at the production however has dissuaded me 
from my purpose. I cannot descend ta the level of 
such a publication, and reply to it with argument, or in 
any other way that might imply toward it the slightest 
degree of respect ; or which might give it even imagi- 
nary weight. The only sentiments it can awaken in 
my mind are pity for its weakness and puerility, con- 
tempt for its conceitedness, and abhorrence for its men- 
dacity. It is throughout a feeble, but coarse and mali- 
cious pasquinade, and attempt at ridicule, instead of a 
fair and manly discussion, Though its author cants 
about morality and religion, it breathes, from beginning 
to end, a spirit as immoral and unchristian, because 
mendacious and abusive, as it is insolent and discour- 
teous. And in neither of these qualities is it surpassed 
by the vilest political tirades of the day. 

If the author of the " New-York Humbugs " either 
possesses now, or aims at possessing hereafter, the 
slightest standing in science and letters, it is surpri- 
sing that even folly itself, however rank and wanton, 
should have permitted in him an act so irrevocably suc=- 

9* 



102 APPENDIX. 

cedal to his reputation, as that he has perpetrated by his 
attack on Phrenology. Should he even in time to come 
compose something true in science, and not entirely 
discreditable in literature, still will " Chapter III. " of 
his " New-York Humbugs " cling to his escutcheon, a 
mark for the curling lip, and " slow, unmoving finger 
of scorn " to point and mock at, and for detestation to 
knit his withering brow at, which neither time nor 
change can ever efface. Nor is our author's emptying 
out of abuse and misrepresentation condemnable only, 
on account of its violation of truth and decorum. It 
is but the dregs, feculent, time-worn and stale, of what 
scores of his predecessors had poured out before him. 
It contains not a single thought, nor even perhaps a form 
of expression, which does not disgrace the pages of 
many antecedent attacks on Phrenology. It possesses 
not therefore even the humble merit of originality in 
calumny, or novelty in falsehood. Though, as already 
stated, I cannot condescend to reply by argument to 
such an imbecile, crude, and virulent article, it is due 
perhaps to the reader, as well as to myself, that I should 
illustrate and confirm the foregoing strictures, by a few 
quotations from it. 

Our author commences " Chapter III. " with an un- 
truth, in asserting that Phrenology and Animal Mag- 
netism are similar in character; that the same forms of 
mind are particularly prone to a belief in both ; and that 
these forms are necessarily imaginative, fanatical, and 
inclined to the marvellous. The following are his 
words. 

This " science, falsely so called, (Phrenology) is a 
among the prevalent and prevailing humbugs of the day, 



APPENDIX. 103 

and it is placed next to animal magnetism, in the pre- 
sent volume, because of its claiming to be of similar an- 
tiquity, and of kindred character too ; since both pro- 
fess to be eminently philosophical. The same individuals 
who embrace the one, very frequently become the willing 
disciples of the other." 

This I say is untrue. There are few, if any persons 
living who seriously profess the "philosophy" of Ani- 
mal Magnetism. The number of those who even prac- 
tise the art of it is very small ; and respecting the phi- 
losophy or reason of it, nearly all, I believe, are silent; or, 
stronger still, acknowledge their ignorance. Assuredly 
I have never heard an individual attempting to explain 
it, except by attributing it to action on the imagination ; 
which comes much nearer to a confession of ignorance, 
than to a profession of philosophy. Nor do I know of 
any respectable publication on the subject. No one, 
as far as I am informed, has ever pretended to say, either 
verbally or in print, why, or how any magnetic or gal- 
vanic influence is excited by the process pursued ; or 
why or how, if it even were excited, it could produce 
the effects ascribed to the art. And, that " the same 
individuals who embrace Phrenology are more prone 
than others to a belief in Animal Magnetism," is a po- 
sition as unfounded as imagination can conceive. It is 
an empty and groundless assertion of our author, made 
for the purpose of carrying a point, under a reckless- 
ness whether it be true or false. 

As far as my information extends, Spurzheim was the 
only distinguished Phrenologist, who has expressed a 
belief in Animal Magnetism. And his belief in it was 
exceedingly limited. It was a good-natured friendli- 



104 APPENDIX, 

ness toward it, and nothing more. To employ a com- 
mon form of expression, he fancied that there was " some- 
thing of truth in it ;" but he did not push his views to 
a fourth part of the extent with many others. Nor did 
he ever, I believe, attempt to practise the art. 

Gall, on the contrary, was no Animal Magnetist. 
Nor was he in any degree an imaginative man. On 
the contrary, he was more sternly a votary of jacts and 
fair inferences, than almost any other man I have ever 
known. In stores of analogy also he was peculiarly 
opulent. His conversation was enriched by them to a 
degree that rendered it as delightful as it was instructive. 
But they were never visionary, far-fetched, or laboured 
analogies. They came to him unsought for, and were 
straight to the point — led directly from the known to 
the unknown — from the simple to the complex — or 
from the certain to the probable. He did nothing more- 
over in the cloister or the closet. His sphere was the 
wide and open field of nature. And there he imagined 
nothing. He observed accurately, reflected profoundly, 
made correct deductions, and thus studied, learnt, and 
represented things as they were. 

The two Combes again, Elliotson, Connolly, Brous- 
sais, Otto of Copenhagen, and scores of other able 
Phrenologists I could name, are no believers in Animal 
Magnetism. They have no fanaticism, I mean, on the 
subject. Nor are they indeed fanatics in. any thing ; 
but men of keen and practised observation, cool delibe- 
ration, sound judgment, and untiring perseverance. 
And such are the men best fitted to make discoveries, 
improve science, and benefit their race. 

Were it admissible in me to speak of myself, I might; 



APPENDIX. 105 

correctly say, that, within the last eighteen years, I have 
been instrumental in making several thousand converts 
to Phrenology. And I am inclined to believe, that 
there was not an Animal Magnetist in the number. 

Let it not be understood, however, from these re- 
marks, that I am a positive condemner of Animal Mag- 
netism. Far from it. I have not hitherto studied the 
subject with sufficient closeness, and to a sufficient ex- 
tent, to have matured my opinion, and prepared myself 
to pronounce on it. And I never form an opinion of 
any thing, whether light and simple, or weighty and com- 
plex, in anticipation of the necessary inquiry. Had the 
author of the "Humbugs" acted with like caution, fair- 
ness, and justice, that " clap-trap " work would have 
been yet unwritten. For, to the eye and understanding 
of every man of discernment, it " stands confessed " a 
deliberate clap-trap — a bait for popularity, and nothing 
more. It is a lure — I must add, a very shallow and 
culpable, yet not an unplausible one — to what the 
writer has so elegantly and classically denominated the 
"gullibility of human nature." 

For the prolongation of what he terms the " tempo- 
rary existence " of Phrenology, our author assigns three 
reasons. Of these, one is, 

" The array of great names, including those of learned 
and scientific men, who have cultivated and taught it, 
and dignified it by the misnomer of philosophy and 
science." 

If then Phrenology be such a source of rank impos- 
ture and palpable delusion, and so senseless in itself, as 
the writer asserts it to be, will he favour us with a good 
reason, why so many great, enlightened, and scientific 



106 APPENDIX. 

men have blindly attached themselves to it, and given 
it their support ; while he himself, who is certainly dis- 
tinguished by neither talent, science nor learning, has 
penetrated its fallacies, and detected in it its lurking 
and portentous spirit of mischief! Is he reared up, in- 
spired, and fitted for the purpose,* of enlightening his 
race, and protecting them from the deadly contamina- 
tion, and unpardonable sin of this hydra of evil ? In 
" humbler English," does be fancy himself some re- 
doubtable personage, destined_to do feats, at the sight 
or even mention of which, the " world shall grow pale V 7 
May we judge from the tone in which the gentleman 
writes, these interrogatories must be answered affirma- 
atively. Hence-forward then, let the frog in the fable 
be forgotten, and the author of the " New-York Hum- 
bugs," in conflict with Phrenologists, be substituted in 
its place ! A few remarks more ; and I shall dismiss 
from my thoughts both the subject and its source. 

Among the numerous gross and unqualified false- 
hoods which crowd the pages of Dr. Reese's " Hum- 
bugs, " the following are alone sufficient to consign to 
disgrace the work and its author. 

" The organs (of the brain) should all be double or 
none, while the science lays down a number of single 
organs." p. 71. 

Will Dr. Reese favour the public with the names of 
his " single " phrenological organs ? I call them " his, " 
because they do not belong to either the science or its 
advocates. Their organs are all " double," as the Doc- 
tor declares they ought to be. Whether the gentleman 
made this groundless statement from ignorance or a 
spirit of carelessness, or mendacity, I neither know, nor 



APPENDIX. 107 

care. My concern is not with its source, but it3 cha* 
racter. And I pronounce it untrue. The writer must 
himself moreover know it to be so. 

Again. " And that the science of Christianity, and the 
book of Revelation are entirely at variance with Phre- 
nology, needs no other proof than the fact «very where 
apparent, that all the hosts of infidelity are marshalled 
in its favour, while its originators, propagators, and pro- 
minent teachers, from Gall and Spurzheim down to 
Amariah Brigham, M. D., have been either skeptics or 
free thinkers, Deists or Atheists, neologists or mate- 
rialists." p. 72. 

This is a notorious falsehood, and must be so pro* 
nounced. The reader I trust will pardon me for the use 
of such strong and harsh expressions, which may be of- 
fensive to the ear of refinement and delicacy. Though 
I may acknowledge the impropriety of them as coming 
from me, and as being employed in a scientific discus- 
sion ; I cannot admit the incorrectness of their appli- 
cation. 

Neither on principle, nor in fact, have phrenology and 
infidelity the slightest native affinity, or essential con- 
nexion. Free thinkers, skeptics, and deists, have no 
more predilection for phrenology, than other men. On 
the contrary, very many of them are actively hostile to 
the science ; while numbers of the most pious of the 
clergy, and others might be named, who are in the 
ranks of its ardent admirers and advocates. 

Another flagrant untruth. 

" And here they (phrenologists) are taught to regard 
the lascivious man to be prompted by the organ of 
Amativeness, formed by the muscles of the neck." p, 76. 



108 APPENDIX. 

The organ of Amativeness " formed by the muscles 
of the neck!" If Dr. Reese has ever read a single 
book on phrenology, he knows this to be false ; and in 
making the statement, he has deliberately and inten- 
tionally violated truth, and therefore outraged re- 
ligion, of which, I am told, he makes burning professions. 
He even stands self- convicted of falsehood in this case, 
by the following passages in his own work : 

" The doctrines of phrenology may be briefly stated 
to be the following : 

" 1st. The brain is the organ of all our instincts — 
propensities — sentiments — aptitudes — intellectual fa- 
culties — and moral qualities." p. 64. 

Now, the strongest of our " instincts " or " propensi- 
ties " is physical love. Yet here, in direct contradiction 
of what he had previously stated, the miserable blun- 
derer declares its organ to be, not any portion of the 
brain, but the "muscles of the neck!" To be always 
consistent, says the proverb, " liars should have good 
memories !" The application of this, in the present 
case, we leave to others — to our author himself, if the 
task has any attractions for him. 

Speaking of Gall's discovery of the organ of Lan- 
guage, our author asserts, that the illustrious German 
" located that organ in the eyes" and deemed its strength 
and perfection to correspond to the size and structure of 
those orbs. " All phrenologists," says he again, " agree 
in attributing the faculty of speech, and the power of ar- 
ticulating sounds, to the eyes" 

An untruth more deliberate and flagitious than this, 
has never been uttered. That Dr. Gall discovered and 
pronounced, that ready and great linguists had promi- 



APPENDIX. 109 

nent eyes, is true. But it is equally so, that he also pro- 
nounced, that the organ or source of language was not 
in the eyes ; but in that 'portion of brain which lies be- 
hind, and a little above them. That point, therefore, if 
unusually developed, necessarily protruded the eyes for- 
ward, and somewhat downward. Hence their promi- 
nence, which Gall declared to be an external manifes- 
tation of the internal cerebral organ. But, with neither 
the " size " nor " structure " of the eye has the discov*- 
erer alleged the power of language to have the shadow 
of connexion, as far as cause and effect are concerned. 
The entire tale, therefore, is but a profligate fabrication 
by Dr. Reese, devised and propagated for the selfish 
and vain purpose of inflating his own popularity, pro- 
moting his pecuniary interests, and bringing discredit on 
a science which he does not undersland. 

In his attempt to arraign phrenology before the pub- 
lic on the odious and fatal charge of immorality and ir- 
religion, Dr. Reese is guilty of as unprincipled and ne- 
farious a distortion of facts, and perversion of argument, 
as ever disgraced the lips of a false witness or accuser, 
or unveiled the turpitude of a venal informer. The fol- 
lowing is a specimen of the malignant balderdash, which 
he distils on this subject from his calumnious pen. 

" They (the phrenologists) tell us, that this disposition 
w T hich loves what is astonishing, mysterious, or miracu- 
lous, is the immediate result of a particular organiza- 
tion ; and it would be as unjust to accuse those endowed 
with it, of imposture, as it would be to censure poets for 
embodying and personifying their ideas ; for they are 
only the slaves of a too energetic action of one part of 
the brain. If this be not sublimated impiety, material- 
10 



110 APPENDIX. 

ism, and fatalism, we know not where these character- 
istics are to be found ; and that such sentiments anni- 
hilate all moral distinctions between truth and falsehood, 
vice and virtue, is too obvious to need comment." 
Again : 

44 The moral aspect of phrenological doctrines is, that, 
however, which renders the humbug the most mischiev- 
ous and deplorable. Multitudes go to the science for 
the purpose of easing a loaded conscience, by learning 
that their delinquencies and views are constitutional, 
and depending wholly on organization. Such find a 
false peace — an imaginary comfort in the doctrine, that 
virtue and vice are alike the result of organs implanted 
by the Creator, and thus persuade themselves into the 
disbelief of human accountability. ***** 

44 Hence, a man is religious or otherwise, by reason 
of a physical necessity, since the prominence, or the de- 
pression of the top of the head, where the organs of 
Veneration, Theosophy, and Marvellousness are located, 
must irresistibly result in one or the other character." 

On this vile and offensive outpouring of ignorance 
and prejudice, mendaciousness and malice, (for they are 
all concerned in the production,) my comment shall be 
brief. The charges contained in it have nothing new in 
them, and do not therefore belong to the author of the 
44 Humbugs." They are the property of the fire-and- 
faggot guerilla party, whose standard he has joined ; and 
are as old as the crusade, waged against Phrenology, 
in the last years of the last century, by the fanatics of 
Vienna, and continued by their auxiliaries, down to the 
present day, under the influence of a spirit of bigotry 
and injustice, falsehood and vindictiveness, that has no 



APPENDIX. Ill 

parallel in modern times. Or if it has any, it is in the 
case of Gallileo, who was placed under the ban and 
discipline of the church, and threatened with the tortures 
of the inquisition itself, on account of his sublime dis- 
coveries in astronomy. Nor can it be held doubtful, 
that those who now pursue an inquisitorial process 
against character and opinion, would, in the seventeenth 
century, have done the same against life and person. 
It is times and manners, not bigots and fanatics, that 
have undergone a change. In the narrow minds and 
ruthless tempers of many pretenders to piety and Chris- 
tianity, the inquisition stilJ exists. Give them sway, 
and they will re-erect it in the dungeon. And the ad- 
vocates of Phrenology would be its first victims ; be- 
cause, in the discovery and diffusion of liberal science, 
they are in the lead. 

Did not other considerations forbid the measure, nei- 
ther time nor space permits me at present to reply to the 
charges of materialism and fatalism, immorality and 
impiety, preferred against Phrenology, by those who 
are ignorant of it, or hostile to it through the influence 
of sinister motives. For the science has but two class- 
es of opponents ; those who have never studied it, and 
do not therefore understand it ; and those who feel them- 
selves in some way personally interested in its refuta- 
tion and overthrow. And they have been already scores 
of times answered to the satisfaction of all such as are 
actuated by candour, amenable to reason, and the pos- 
sessors of common sense. To repeat the arguments, 
therefore, in defence of the science, on the present 
occasion, would be altogether superfluous in me. 

Let not the author of the " Humbugs " however, 



112 APPENDIX. 

imagine that I have any disposition to decline a con- 
test, of a becoming and beneficial character, in behalf 
of Phrenology, should any thing occur to render it ne- 
cessary. Though no professed knight-errant in the 
cause, yet on one condition I will cheerfully break a 
lance with any writer, whose name and standing entitle 
him to a meeting. And the condition, which is an hon- 
ourable one, is as follows : The champion must de- 
port himself with knightly courtesy, bear truth on his 
banner, and present in the tourney some new ground of 
challenge — I mean some new charge against the sound- 
ness and merits of the science. In that case he shall 
be met in a corresponding style of courtesy and respect- 
fulness. Not otherwise. To no charge or challenge, 
stained with untruth, stale and trashy in its character, or 
dictated by a spirit of bigotry or fanaticism, invective or 
abuse, will an answer be returned. And of such un- 
manly and unchristian description is every imputation, 
by which phrenology has been hitherto assailed. By 
neither Justice nor truth, magnanimity nor decency, nor 
by the slightest discoverable wish to benefit science, 
or promote the true interests of the human family, has 
even one of them been characterized. Nor has any 
of the assaults which Phrenology has sustained, com- 
mitted a more profligate outrage on truth and manliness, 
morality and religion, than Dr. Reese's Humbug. 

I shall only add, that one of my motives for noticing 
the " New-York Humbugs" in this place, is, that their 
rude and discourteous author may find himself associa- 
ted in recompense with the author of the " Two Lec- 
tures," with whom he has asociated himself in a plot 
against science. For thus associated the two writers. 



APPENDIX. 113 

are, in bestowing encomiums on each other's produc- 
tions, and in that way endeavouring to extend their cir- 
culation, and give weight to their matter. I have thought 
proper therefore, to impale them both on the two horns 
of the same dilemma, that, as they have been platonicly 
united in their lives and labours, they may not, in the 
fitness of their reward, be divided. 



10* 



NOTE 



The frontispiece plate is designed to exhibit a fair 
average of the thickness of the human skull, especially 
that of the Caucasian race, in healthy individuals in the 
prime of life. And no pains have been spared, in ex- 
amination and comparison, to render the view accurate. 

At different periods of life, and in different states of 
health, the condition of the cranium, in these respects, 
varies. In childhood the skull is thin, and the frontal 
sinuses so small, as to be scarcely perceptible. In 
adult life, the sinuses are more developed, and the skull 
is thicker. Still however, in persons who are healthy, 
and have never suffered from protracted affections of 
the head, their average does not exceed that represent- 
ed in the plate. I doubt whether the average of the 
sinuses equals it. Those cavities furnish therefore, as 
every one must perceive, no serious impediment to the 
detection of the development of the brain in that re- 
gion. 

In advanced age the condition of these parts is differ- 
ent. So it is in protracted insanity, and other chronic 
cerebral affections. In these cases the brain diminishes 
in size, the skull becomes thicker, and the frontal si- 
nuses more capacious. The causes of these changes 
need not be mentioned. By all well-informed physi- 
ologists they are sufficiently understood. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

This is the discourse, in which the Trustees of Tran- 
sylvania University charge Dr. Caldwell with the design 
of delineating the character of Dr. Dudley. On this 
point two or three questions may be fitly asked. 

Would any one draw such pictures of moral deformity 
as the discourse contains, with a view to their being 
considered the likenesses of honest and honourable men ? 
or would any one of discernment apply them to such 
men ? The application excites a strong suspicion that 
a likeness existed. 

Suppose Dr. Caldwell had drawn abstract pictures 
as remarkable for piety and rectitude, and as free from 
duplicity and guile, as Fenelon, Hervy, or the late 
Bishop White, would any person have pronounced them 
likenesses of the same man, for whom the pictures he 
drew were supposed to be intended 1 These questions 
are put. The public will answer them, every one for 
himself. 

The discourse is printed verbatim as it was delivered ; 
certain portions of it that were not delivered, on account 
of its length, being in italics. During its delivery, Dr. 
Caldwell did not direct toward Dr. Dudley a single look 
or gesture. If the audience therefore, or any of them* 



116 PREFATORY NOTE. 

applied the pictures to that gentleman, they were in-* 
duced to do so, not by the manner of the speaker, but by 
the matter of the speech. In a word, they made the 
application on account of the likeness which they, from 
some cause, perceived or fancied. 

If there be blame in the case therefore, Dr. Caldwell 
feels that it cannot justly fall on him. The fault lies in 
being a man addicted to falsehood, not in delineating 
one. We have fallen on evil times, indeed, if the busi- 
ness of life be, not to have vice " undone," but to keep 
it " unknown ,•" as was once, we are told, the rule in 
Venice. 



THOUGHTS 

ON THE 

PHRENOLOGY OF FALSEHOOD 

AND 

ITS KINDRED VICES. 

A VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, TO THE MEDICAL GRADUATES IN 
TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY; DELIVERED MARCH 15, 1837, BY 
CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D. 

GENTLEMEN GRADUATES : 

When one of the sages of Greece was asked by 
an Athenian youth, what were the choicest elements of 
the human character, and the brightest ornaments of 
human nature, he replied, " a regard for truth, 

JUSTICE TOWARD MEN, AND PIETY TOWARD THE GODS." 

In accordance with this answer are the spirit and 
tenour of every precept and point of doctrine of the 
christian religion, that bears either directly or indirectly 
on the subject. In like accordance are the tenets and 
practice of every distinguished teacher and pattern of 
morals, whose history is known to us. And in a 
corresponding strain does one of the most accom- 
plished judges of man deliver himself, when he ex- 
claims : 

(l A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod ; 

An honest man's the noblest work of God." 



118 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

But in confirmation of this maxim in morals, it is not 
necessary to refer to writings and opinions either an- 
cient or modern, sacred or profane ; nor to any other 
form of evidence from without. The truth of it is 
sustained by a witness within ourselves, whose testimony 
no infidel will reject, no casuist make a subject of cavil, 
nor skeptic of doubt. It is written on the constitution 
of man, in characters which can be neither erased, 
misinterpreted, nor concealed. We feel instinctive- 
ly, and intuitively recognise the surpassing beauty, 
sacredness, and value, of the qualities embraced in 
the reply of the sage. And in proportion to the 
amount and purity of those qualities, which our con- 
sciences tells us we ourselves possess, are the com- 
placency and satisfaction with which we contemplate 
our condition, and the actual degree of our self-estima- 
tion. No man, however lofty his rank, and confident 
his bearing in his intercourse with the world, or what- 
ever show of respect he may receive from his adherents 
and followers, can stand well in his own esteem, if he 
feels himself deficient, in those bright and glorious attri- 
butes of character — if he feels that he is wanting in 
truth and its concomitants, the shield and buckler 
against the stings and arrows of an offended conscience 
— or rather that which keeps the conscience free from 
offence. He may for a time impose on the public, and 
even mak# an effort to blindfold himself. But the 
struggle is vain ; and failure is certain. In his dark 
and lonely hours, when sleep has shed his dews on the 
eyelids of honesty, he is haunted by the spectre of his 
own degradation ; and sooner or later his masquerade 
closes, and he appears to the eye of general scorn, the 
artificial and miserable thing that he is. 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 119 

It is obvious then that truth and fidelity are record 
mended alike by a constitutional instinct in ourselves, 
by the ripest experience and wisdom of earth, and by all 
we know of the approval of Heaven, as of paramount 
importance, as well to the honour, as to the interests of 
our race. Of this also the converse is true. By the 
same instinct and high authority the practice of falsehood, 
in all its modifications — open lying, theft, slander, 
swindling and overreaching, duplicity in action and 
words, perjury, prevarication, and treachery, are de- 
nounced as deep and nefarious vices, consigned to in- 
famy, and doomed to punishment. 

I am aware of having here grouped, under the head 
of falsehood, a number of crimes which are not usually 
regarded as of the same kind, or as springing in any 
degree from a common, or even perhaps from a kindred 
source. I do not however doubt of being able to con- 
vince you that the case is otherwise — that they all 
arise in part from the same root, and therefore partake 
of a common nature — that they are convertible into 
each other — that he who, under one form of tempta- 
tion, will equivocate, prevaricate, and shuffle, practise 
calumny and duplicity, make faithless professions, and 
debase his being by deliberate falsehood — the wretch 
I say, who will thus outrage truth and manliness, under 
one temptation, will, under another, cheat, steal, commit 
perjury and forgery, and play the traitor, and even the 
murderer ! — And principle, as well as experience, con- 
firms the position. " He that will lie, will steal,'' is a 
phrase so strictly conformable to observation, that it has 
passed into a proverb. 

Truth is the rock on which the temple of virtue and 



120 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

morality rests. Remove it ; the foundation is gone, 
and the fabric is a ruin. Nor is this all. Truth forms 
both the basis and the superstructure of creation itself. 
When the Deity called into existence the universe of 
mind and matter, he did so in conformity to the princi- 
ples of truth. It was not in his nature or even in his 
power to do otherwise ; for his own moral essence is 
truth, which at once controls and hallows his actions. 
To suppose him capable of acting in opposition to truth, 
or apart from it, would be to suppose him imperfect and 
feeble like ourselves. It is a strict and conscientious 
adherence therefore to truth, that draws man nearest to 
the Deity, and makes him most resemble him. And the 
converse is equally true. The gross and habitual de- 
parture from truth, most completely estranges man from 
the Deity, and covers him with the deepest degradation 
and guilt. To the minds of enlightened and reasoning 
men, this statement is as undeniable, as that things equal 
to one and the same thing, are equal to one another. 

The crimes of robbery, piracy, and murder, though 
partaking also of falsehood, contain less of the meanness 
of it, than either of the other forms of guilt just enume- 
rated. Robbers, pirates, and murderers are often gene- 
rous, bold and manly. But liars, thieves, hypocrites, 
and traitors are usually incorporations of ignominy and 
cowardice. 

On an occasion however like the present, when, for 
the last time, you are to be the listeners and I the speak- 
er, and when you are on the eve of entering on the trials 
and responsibilities of professional life — on such an oc- 
casion, it would but ill comport with the respect and duty 
I owe you, and the course I have always pursued in 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 121 

addressing you, were I to present you with nothing but 
a series of propositions, unsupported by suitable evi- 
dence. Having uniformly endeavoured, in all my dis- 
courses and discussions before you, to deal in reason as 
well as assertion, in philosophy as well as fact, it is not 
my design, in the present instance, to depart from the 
practice. To demonstrate therefore their turpitude as 
a class, and the deep abhorrence in which they should 
be held, I shall attempt a brief analysis of the several 
vices just referred to, in which their kindred nature will 
be made to appear. In this disquisition I shall neces- 
sarily treat the subject phrenologically ; because it can- 
not be satisfactorily or even intelligibly treated in any 
other way. Nor will you regard this mode of handling 
it with surprise or disapproval. Most of you have stu- 
died Phrenology to such effect, as to be convinced of 
its truth. You know it therefore, as the genuine science 
of mind, to be alone applicable to the topic I am discus- 
sing, and alone competent to such elucidation of it as its 
importance requires. 

All vices are, in their origin and character, exclu- 
sively animal. They are seated I mean in the animal 
compartment of the brain, and are the offspring of the 
excess or abuse, perversion or misapplication of one or 
more of the animal propensities. They hold in their 
composition no ingredient that is truly human — nothing 
I mean that elevates man above brutality. This repre- 
sentation, which is susceptible of proof, shows, on prin- 
ciple, the base and degraded character of vice, in addi- 
tion to its sinfulness ; his animal nature being the 
lowest and least worthy and honorable element in the 
constitution of man. Nor is there wanting another con- 
11 



122 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

sideration exhibiting in a still stronger light this inherent 
debasement. He that is habitually addicted to vice is es- 
sentially deficient or deranged in his moral nature, es- 
pecially in the higher and nobler faculties of Benevo- 
lence, Veneration, and Conscientiousness, as well as in 
the superior intellectual faculties, whose master province 
is reflection and reason. He therefore I say who in- 
dulges in vice, of whatever description, so far descends 
from the sphere of human action and honour, and min- 
gles with the brute. He even sinks beneath the brute ; 
because he disobeys and abuses powers bestowed on 
him by the Creator, to withhold him from such debase- 
ment, and of which the inferior creation are destitute. 
Hence the pilfering of the fox is much less offensive 
than human theft ; and the murder of man, when per- 
petrated by his fellow, is infinitely more shocking, than 
his destruction by the wolf, the hyena, or the tiger. But 
to speak more of the elements and philosophy of crime. 
A confirmed propensity to destroy human life, like 
that possessed by Dehman, who was executed ten or 
twelve years ago, in Indiana, for the ninth murder he 
had committed, without provocation, or motives of in- 
terest or revenge, as a mere amateur in blood ; or like 
that which impelled Margaretta Gottfried to the actual 
destruction, by poison, of more than twenty human be- 
ings, on as many different occasions, and to attempt the 
destruction of twice as many more, for which she was 
beheaded at Bremen, in 1830 — a propensity such as 
this, is the product of excessive, perhaps morbid action 
in Destructiveness, and some defect or perversion in 
the action of Benevolence, Veneration, Conscientious- 
ness and Causality. Had these latter organs been 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 123 

sound and vigorous in their functions, they would have 
restrained Destructiveness, and prevented the murders 
— on the same ground on which a few men of 
peaceful and orderly habits interpose their influence, 
and withhold the ruffian from deeds of violence. 

In him also who is addicted to falsehood, Conscien- 
tiousness, Yeneration, and Causality are wanting in de- 
velopment or action or both ; or their action is perverted ; 
and the functions (inordinately strong) of Secretiveness 
and Cautiousness, the two meanest organs (may any be 
so denominated) belonging to man, constitute his " riding 
passion." To common lying, add a propensity to 
slander and defame, and the result shows that the organ 
of Destructiveness, which is the source of hatred, ma- 
lice, and a propensity to mischief of every description, 
is also in excessive action. For the usual aim of that 
organ, when unduly excited, is to injure and destroy 
character, as well as person. Combativeness, which is 
comparatively a manly propensity, does not belong to the 
liar, who, to other marks of meanness and degradation, 
unites for the most part, as already mentioned, the qual- 
ity of cowardice. A moral coward he necessarily is ; 
because a man who is morally intrepid and firm, feeling 
no unsoundness in his conduct, character, or inten- 
tion, has nothing to fear, were he susceptible of 
fear, and therefore no temptation to conceal or misrep- 
resent. Such a man cannot descend from his proud 
elevation in moral rectitude, to the debasement and tur- 
pitude of hypocrisy and deception. That degradation 
he leaves to the changeling and the craven, the profli- 
gate and the culprit, who quail under the apprehension' 
of their actions and designs being visited by the light* 



124 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

I shall only add, that a lie is an acknowledgment of 
inferiority or guilt in him who is its author. Men rarely 
fever depart from truth, except to escape from penalty 
or punishment ; or to represent themselves or their con- 
ditions, or actions, superior to what they are, and thus 
gain credit for a fictitious standing — or to better their 
condition by criminal means. Truth serves all the 
purposes of the innocent and the honorable ; but to the 
dishonorable and the guilty falsehood is essential, 
and can alone afford them a temporary protection. 
The crime of falsifying can be perpetrated by deeds 
as well as by words. It consists in the intentional as- 
sertion or representation of what is known not to exist, 
or of facts or things in a light different from the real 
one. And this, I say, may be done by acting as cer- 
tainly as by speaking. Falsehood, then, in its full ex- 
tent, consists of two leading elements, concealment and 
fiction ; the concealment or denial of what is, and the 
feigning of what is not. The main-spring of the whole 
therefore is Secretiveness in a state of excessive action, 
and divorced from the guidance and restraint of the 
higher faculties. That propensity, which is but the love 
or instinct of concealment, impels other faculties to the 
kind and degree of fiction, appropriate to the occasion, 
without which its work would be incomplete, and its 
purpose defeated. Its fabrications and contrivances 
therefore differ according to the end to be obtained by 
them. But, in all cases, secrecy is the chief ingredient 
among the means of deception, without which, I say, the 
scheme would fail. That these views are as applicable 
to swindling, overreaching, cheating, and all other forms 
of practical knavery, as they are to common falsehood, 
may be easily made appear. 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 125 

These latter views consist in the false appropriation 
by one person, to his own ends and uses, of that which 
in truth belongs to another ; in the devising of the 
means by which this fraud may be effected ; and in the 
concealment of the iniquitous object he aims at. Here 
therefore is nothing more than the perpetration of an un- 
truth in a new shape. And that shape is given to it by 
the union of the inordinate action of Acquisitiveness with 
that of Secretiveness. In this case, as in the former 
ones, Benevolence, Veneration, Conscientiousness, and 
Causality, are inactive, feeble, or perverted ; and here 
also Destructiveness mingles at times in the mischief, 
for the malicious purpose of inflicting an injury on the 
person defrauded, and thus giving him pain. These 
vices then are identical with lying, except that they con- 
tain in their composition one additional element — the 
love of gain. Remove that, and you convert swindling, 
cheating, and other forms of knavery, into the promul- 
gation of simple falsehood in speech, or its perpetration 
by acts. 

Theft is but knavery in a different shape, and a higher 
degree. The elements of the two forms of vice are the 
same. In each, Benevolence, Veneration, Conscien- 
tiousness, and the reflecting faculties are again perverted, 
inactive or feeble ; and Covetiveness, Secretiveness, 
and Cautiousness, are in action ; the two former to excess. 
Each therefore is the product alike of the meanest and 
most grovelling of the animal propensities ; and in each 
the highest and noblest of the moral and intellectual 
faculties are deficient or at fault. They are in their 
nature, moreover, as already intimated, closely allied to 
falsehood in words. In plain language, the thief, the 
11* 



126 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

liar, the swindler, and the hypocrite, and he who prac- 
tises knavery or deception in any other form, belong to 
the same family of felons ; and any one of them may be 
readily changed into either of the others. It is a maxim 
in morals, to which there is no exception, that he who does 
not hold his word, when pledged, as sacred as his oath 
or his bond, is neither an honest nor an honourable man. 
He who is true to his promise only by compulsion, or 
from a motive of deep self-interest, is not true to it at 
all. Remove his compulsion or selfishness, and his 
falsehood will appear. The greatest of felons, when 
manacled and imprisoned, commits felony no longer. 
The reason is plain. The power to steal, rob, murder, 
and prove a traitor, is taken from him. Nor is he less 
innocent on account of his inaction, than the individual 
is, who refrains from falsehood, only because the com- 
mission of it would prove injurious to him. 

But all is not yet told. The deepest crime belonging 
to this class is now to he named. It is treachery. 
No other form of falsehood equals it in baseness and 
guilt. In all that is vile, revolting, and criminal, it 
far surpasses theft. The reason is obvious. It more 
deeply outrages what should be held most sacred in 
human feeling. The traitor has been confided in, while 
the thief has not. The latter, therefore, has violated no 
plighted faith ; while the former is a monument of de- 
liberate perfidy. When Judas is declared to have be- 
trayed with a kiss r the imputation is the most damnatory 
that language can record, or fancy conceive, against hu- 
man depravity. Yet every one who betrays at all> be- 
trays with a kiss, or some other token of similar import 
— some act expressive of attachment and good will, to 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 127 

prevent suspicion, and secure confidence. The traitor, 
I say, is therefore more guilty than the thief, because 
his crime is against his comrades that have trusted and 
cherished, or in some way benefitted him. This ren- 
ders him trebly false — to virtue, to friendship, and to 
his God. But the thief, as such, is specially trusted by 
no one. Hence he violates no pledge of fidelity given 
in a sacred moment of confidence ; nor does he delibe- 
rately trample on one of the holiest feelings of our nature. 
The fair exterior that treachery puts on, while rumi- 
nating the darkest purposes within, ranks it, I say, with 
the most execrable of vices. It makes it realize the 
fearful picture of Conspiracy, drawn by the great dram- 
atist, in one of his happiest moments of inspiration, and 
in his strongest colours. The scene and time are, 
when Brutus is told by his porter, that some of the con- 
spirators against Caesar, who were at his gate, on a visit 
to him by night, were muffled in their cloaks, to escape 
recognition. On receiving this information, the noble 
Roman thus soliloquizes : 

« O, conspiracy ! 



Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, 

When evils are most free ? O, then, by day, 

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough 

To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy;. 

Hide it in smiles and affability ; 

For if thou put'st thy native semblance on, 

Not Erebus itself were dim enough 

To hide thee from prevention." 

So is it with treachery. Conscious that no gloom is 
deep enough to mask its hideous visage, if presented in 
its native features and expression, it clothes it in mild- 
ness, courtesy, and pleasantness of look and manner, 



128 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OP 

and, in the blandest accents, that counterfeit friendliness 
and affection can utter, whispers in the ear it means to 
ensnare, its fatal falsehoods. For falsehood is the prime 
engine of its mischief. And when malice unites with 
this, and the guise of treachery is still retained, the com- 
pound forms one of the most appalling of human enor- 
mities. Then may the possessor of it say with Richard, 

" Why, I can smile, and murder while 1 smile ; 
And cry, content* to that which grieves my heart;. 
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears j 
And frame my face to all occasions.'' 

—Ay ; and so can others I could name, do this, as dex- 
terously as crook-backed Richard. 

One of the basest and most abhorrent forms of treach- 
ery, is that under which a culprit, charged with a deep 
or capital offence, turns informer or accuser, and testifies 
against his associates in crime. It has long been cur- 
rent, as a forensic adage, that the greatest villain and 
coward turns " King's or State's evidence," to rescue 
himself from the cord, and consign to it his less offend- 
ing fellows. And the maxim is equally true, in its re- 
lation to oilier trangressors, charged with lighter and 
more venial offences. He who, in any case of imputed 
guilt, turns informer, and accuses his comrades, does 
so from motives of bribery, cowardice, or vindictiveness 
— to gratify his cupidity, escape punishment, or glut his 
revenge. Viewed in the two former of these aspects, 
he is an object of pity and scorn ; in the latter, of exe- 
cration and abhorrence. In either and all of them, he 
is a recreant and a renegade from truth, lost to magnan- 
imity, manliness, and virtue — and will be so considered 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 129 

by honorable men, until his name and character shall 
be lost in forgetfulness. He is one of those " wretches " 
of the poet, who " concentred all in self," will never, 
either in life or in death, be an object of sorrow or praise ; 
but 

" Living, shall forfeit fair renown ; 
And doubly dying shall go down 
To the vile earth, from which he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung." 

Descended from the same source, and similar in 
character, are various other minor forms of deception, 
which daily annoy us, and shed their deleterious influ- 
ence through society. To this class of evils, which, 
though petty in detail, are momentous in the aggregate 
of mischief they produce, belong equivocation in speech; 
false professions, shuffling conduct, promise-breaking, 
prevarication, and all other shapes, which insincerity 
and duplicity so aptly put on. 

Such is the motley brood of falsehood, that is over- 
running our land, as the land of the Pharoahs was over- 
run by the loathsome frog and the devouring locust. 
And the moral pestilence is far the most deplorable. 
The reptile and the insect are only an outward annoy- 
ance ; but the poison of falsehood penetrates the inward 
man, and turns him throughout to a moral lazar. Were 
this pestilence of the soul confined in its ravages to the 
ignorant and uncultivated, it would still be an evil of 
dangerous import. But when it fastens on men who 
occupy some of the high places of the community, whose 
examples are weighty, and their sway extensive, it be- 
comes a national distemper, and threatens the produc- 
tion of a national calamity. And such is, at present, 



130 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

the alarming condition of the United States. Among 
the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the culti- 
vated and the uncultivated, a disregard for truth is por- 
tentously prevalent. In the pursuit of business, and 
the transaction of affairs both public and private, plain 
dealing and honesty of purpose are wantonly discarded, 
and intrigue, management, and stratagem, have posses- 
sion of their places. In this perverted and ominous 
condition of things, prevarication has supplanted truth, 
cunning has become the substitute for wisdom and ta- 
lent, a love of power has usurped the place of patriot- 
ism, and selfishness the places of charity, justice, and 
philanthropy. Wealth and popular favour, as instru- 
ments of power, constitute the idol to which " the mil- 
lion" do homage. To propitiate that, sacrifices are 
made on the altar of a vulgar ambition, unprincipled in 
their nature, and degrading to all who take part in their 
ministry. The man who attains his end by hypocrisy 
and stratagem, instead of being censured and rebuked, 
as in former times, for his dishonesty and guilt, is praised 
now for his acuteness and dexterity. 

Is a project set on foot, whose object is the promotion 
of intellectual or moral improvement, the correction of 
abuses, or the accomplishment of any other form of ac- 
knowledged usefulness ? Is it for the establishment or 
endowment of an university or a college, the amendment 
of the condition of a professional institution, or the ad- 
vancement of the interests of some mechanical or literary 
association ? Or is it for any other purpose subservient 
to the public welfare ? In such a case, sentiments of hon- 
our and manliness, no less than motives of morality and 
duty require, that those concerned in the project should 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 131 

act with fidelity, consistency, and firmness, and not play 
the part of time-servers or shufflers, dependents or para- 
sites. Influenced only by public considerations, they 
should press toward the attainment of a public end. 
JYeither selfish nor social feelings, apart from this, should 
mingle in their counsels or sway in their measures. 

But rarely, at the present time, is this line of conduct 
faithfully pursued. In cases of the sort, different indi- 
viduals shrink, at times, from their duty in supine inac- 
tion, or join in opposition to schemes, of which even they 
themselves had been the first proposers, for different rea- 
sons — some from a craven dread of responsibility — 
others from a fear of the loss of popularity, and a for- 
feiture of the incense of flattery and favour — a third set 
from an unwillingness to encounter difficidty and trouble, 
or make personal sacrifices — a fourth from feebleness oj 
resolution and instability of purpose — a fifth from brib- 
ery, or some other venal motive — a sixth, perhaps, from 
a mixture of several of these influences — and a seventh 
from a still more unpardonable cause — a malicious de- 
termination to betray their associates in the enterprise, 
injure their reputation and standing, and thus gain an 
ascendency over them in general popularity, or in the 
direction and benefits of some other undertaking about to 
be set on foot. 

As respects the foregoing general concerns, so inte- 
resting in themselves, and so important to the dignity 
and welfare of society, you, gentlemen, will stand doubly 
related to the community hereafter — as physicians, and 
as men. And, in both capacities, but more especially 
in the former, it will become the standing which, I doubt 
not, you will attain, not only to avoid yourselves, as a 



132 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

blot on your profession and your personal reputations, 
the practice of every form of imposture and falsehood, 
but with all your powers, and the means at your com- 
mand, to aim at its prevention and extinction in others. 
For the purpose, then, of aiding you in your preparation 
for the enterprise, allow me to invite your attention to a 
few of the methods, by which artful and unprincipled 
physicians violate their obligations to truth and honesty, 
and dishonour their calling, by descending to the devices 
of empirics and impostors. And here permit me to re- 
mark in general, by way of illustration, and to prevent 
the necessity of repetition and detail, that I would brand, 
as empirics, all who practise medicine without principles, 
or in opposition to them ; and as an impostor, every one 
who is guilty of any form of professional affectation, ar- 
tifice, or concealment. Some of these modes of affec- 
tation and imposture shall be forthwith represented to 
you. 

In the sketch of professional charlatanry here contem- 
plated, I shall not include operations by steam, vegetable 
medicines, secret nostrums, bone-setting processes, pa- 
tent remedies, nor any of the numerous panaceas and 
catholicons, the extensive patronage and employment of 
which constitute, in part, the disgrace of the age. These 
are so universally acknowledged to be the fruits and 
symbols of medical knavery, that no physician of char- 
acter ventures to be concerned in them. 

In close affinity to these devices is the artifice pur- 
sued by many physicians, of boasting of their pre-emi- 
nent professional success. In their own report of their 
practice, they cure every thing. In recommendation of 
their skill, and to secure additional means of testing it, 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 133 

some of them assert that they njever lose a patient in 
any form or degree of fever, in croup, dropsy of the 
brain, or cholera infantum ; and that, in their hands, 
even pulmonary consumption is a manageable disease ! 
Such assertions are scandalous, because they are untrue ; 
and criminal, because they do mischief on a twofold 
ground. With the intelligent portion of the community 
they tend to bring medicine and its practitioners into dis- 
repute ; and, by deluding the ignorant, they induce 
them to resort, in their sickness, to the authors of such 
devices, and to repose in them a confidence which often 
proves fatal to them, by preventing them from receiving 
aid from abler and more honest and honorable members 
of the profession. For in medicine, as in other vocations, 
fraud and weakness are the almost inseparable concomi- 
tants of boasting. Under such circumstances, artifice 
and intrigue are employed as substitutes for science, and 
skill ; because truth and honesty can never be made to 
subserve the purposes of groundless pretence and inordi- 
nate ambition. 

The physicians here described never fail to exagge- 
rate the amount of their practice, as well as the success 
of it ; well knowing that, like other things, business, 
real or reputed, attracts in proportion to its quantity 
whether actual, or feigned ; and that therefore an abun- 
dant extent of it produces more, by what may be ac- 
counted a law of nature. 

Another class of Physicians, without falsely boasting 
of the amount of their business in words, do so inaction. 
Of these, some becoming wonderfully devout, are punc- 
tual in their attendance at church, as well as at other 
places of public resort, where, by their servants or re- 
tainers, they contrive to be called out once or twice an 

12 



134 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OP 

hour, as if to administer to the wants of the sick, not one 
of whom perhaps is under their care. A member of this 
class of professional counterfeits, who fell within my 
knowledge, practised a like imposture at the house of a 
gentleman to whose daughter he was paying his address- 
es. But even almighty love, which conquers all things 
else, was compelled to surrender to his mightier propen- 
sity to fraud. From the midst of his burning vows and 
tender solicitings, and his strenuous contest with the 
coyness of the fair one, he contrived to be dragged by 
repeated messages to contend with disease. Nor did 
he pack his cards and cog his dice to no purpose. 
He succeeded in his suit, but made no progress in the 
procurement of business. The gallant 9 s misfress being 
thus fraudulently won, and the marriage ceremony and 
its attendant convivialities completed, the husband had 
the felicitous leisure to pass days and weeks in the com- 
pany of his wife, without a summons to the chamber of 
sickness. 

Other members of this class make a show of business 
in another way, different indeed in execution, but identi- 
cal in dishonesty. They constantly exhibit themselves 
in gigs or on horseback, hurrying from one quarter of a 
city or town, or of the country, to another, as if just 
called to apply the trephine, reduce a recent and painful 
luxation, control an alarming hemorrhage from a divided 
artery, or to minister in some other form of disease, 
where delay and death would be synonymous terms. 
Thus are truth and honour disgracefully bartered by 
them for the appearance and reputation of having an ex- 
tensive business ; and the actual business which that 
reputation produces. 

One of these jugglers who was known to me in Phi- 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 135 

ladelphia, adopted a stratagem somewhat different, and, 
as the issue proved, a little more hazardous. Mounting 
a gig every morning, he drove hastily from dwelling to 
dwelling of wealthy and respectable citizens ; and halt- 
ing before each door, entering the hall, and remaining 
long enough for a visit and prescription, returned to his 
vehicle, and proceeded elsewhere in his career of dis- 
honesty. That career however was destined to end in 
a ludicrous and very uninviting catastrophe. 

From the hall of a house, to which his wayward fate 
directed this impostor to make a morning visit, a cloak 
had been stolen on the preceding night. The chief 
waiter in the family was a sturdy young Irishman, re- 
cently imported from the " emerald isle," to whom the 
vagabond iEsculapian was unknown. Hearing a foot- 
step in the hall, unannounced by the bell or the knocker, 
the true-blooded Hibernian, plunged into the passage, 
with the vigilance of an Argus, the spring of a cata- 
mount, and the fidelity of a knight of Castile to his mis- 
tress. Finding there a stranger, whose physiognomy 
did not please him, and who manifested surprise, min- 
gled perhaps with alarm, at his abrupt appearance and 
fiery visage, the son of St. Patrick, grappling the physi- 
cian by the throat, called out to his employer, in a sten- 
torian note, and the accent of his country, " te tief ! te 
tief? master, te tief! te tief! I have got him, I have 
got him, hard and fast!" — During this boisterous in- 
vocation to his master, he beat time to his tongue, with 
his brawny fist, to such effect, that, before relief arrived, 
the discomfited prisoner, who made resistance at first, had 
surrendered at discretion, and was calling for quarter. 
Mean time the master of the house, alarmed by the 
uproar, hastened into the hall, and, recognising the 



136 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

unfortunate pulse-feeler, rescued him from the merciless 
mauling of his faithful domestic. A suitable finale to a 
scheme of imposture ! 

But the entire story of these knights of the pestle and 
mortar, who like Proteus of old, assume all shapes, and, 
like the modern chameleon, all colours, for the procure- 
ment of business, is not yet told. Another caste of 
them make their way to practice, by their kind and af- 
fectionate deportment, in the families where they visit. 
Their inquiries after the health of the several members 
are made with great particularity and earnestness ; and, 
in relation to each of them, something complimentary 
and pleasing is either said or done. The school-boys 
and school-girls of each family are pronounced by them 
the most accomplished and promising in the country. 
For the younger children their pockets are filled with 
apples and cakes, ginger-nuts and sugar-plumbs ; and 
to mothers and grown up daughters, their tongues offer 
abundantly the incense of flattery. Nor do they fail in 
their homage to nurses and grandams, maiden aunts and 
gossipping cousins, who, after halting and lying by for 
years, at the Rubicon of their teens, have ultimately 
passed it. And the success and prospects in business 
of the males of the families share also their regard. 
Nothing of interest or supposed importance to the do- 
mestic establishments escapes the vigilance of their 
inquiries and the kindness of their wishes. 

Not all the artfulness however of these practised 
flatterers can save them at times from mortification and 
disaster. One of them formerly known to me attempted 
to make his way to the favour of parents, by dandling 
and kissing their "incomparable" children. On an 
unlucky occasion, however, in stooping down to kiss the 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 137 

beauteous and darling infant, his lips, by a fatal aberra- 
ration, came into contact with the brow, cheek, or some 
other more sacred portion of the face of the still more 
beauteous and darling mother. This so incensed the 
fair one, that, springing from her seat, she extended to 
the physician her lily-white hand — but not that he might 
bestow on it also a mark of his gallantry. O ! no ; but 
that it might bestow on him a blackened eye, and a 
bleeding nose. Nor did her courtesy end here. She 
ordered him, with a significant movement of her foot, to 
quit the house, and never re-enter it, on pain of the 
vengeance of an offended husband. 

Another class of these favour-hunters erect the pre- 
carious fabric of their dishonesty on a broader basis. 
Instead of confining their adulation and blandishments 
to selected families^ they extend them to every one. 
Their courtesies and professions of regard, familiar nods 
and fawning salutations, are general ; and they are the 
supple, knee-crooking incense-burners, and humble ser- 
vants of the whole community. Their smiles and crin- 
ges, and other artifices to attract notice, and attain pop- 
ularity, become disgustingly common. They meet their 
acquaintance with the smirks of cheats and the sycho- 
phancy of spaniels, approach them, lock arms with 
them, and, leading them into a retired place, whisper in 
their ears something commendatory of themselves, or 
condemnatory of their enemies — or administer to them 
perhaps a nauseous compound of both. Thus, with 
the arch-coquette Belinda, 

"Like the sun, they shine on all alike ;" 
and, with Sir Pertinax McSycophant, the symbol of du- 
plicity, make bows and protestations the scaffolding of 

their fortunes. 

12* 



138 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

These parasites of the public rarely look you fully in 
the face, but eye you askance, as if watching your move- 
ments and endeavoring to penetrate your designs, and 
eagerly striving to veil from you their own ; and their 
conversation is in a tone approaching a whisper. Every 
word they speak, and every action they perform, betoken 
a propensity to concealment and mystery. In the street 
you see them frequently walking arm in arm, and con- 
ferring familiarly with one of their retainers, or with 
some person of influence, whose favour and patronage 
they are anxious to secure — and not unfrequently with 
those whom they secretly hate, and malignantly defame. 

The real intimacies of such counterfeits are few, 
though their apparent ones are numerous. In truth the 
exterior of their whole Jives is a compound of appear- 
ances ; all their realities being studiously covered. Like 
so many whited sepulchres, specious without, but repul- 
sive masses of corruption within, their whole existence 
is a masquerade. They live, and act, and converse but 
in character ; and in w hatever they do, in the eye of 
the world, they are as real actors, as McCredy in Ham- 
let, or Forrest in Spartacus. It is only in solitude that 
they are themselves ; and then, if Conscientiousness be 
not extinct in them, they are miserable monuments of 
self-abasement. Subsisting thus on mere occurrence 
and expediency, they are necessarily the sport and foot- 
ball of events — consistent only in their inconsistencies, 
and steady only in their unsteadiness. What they said 
yesterday they unsay to-day ; while a third and differ- 
ent report will issue from them to-morrow. In vain 
therefore would I attempt to paint them to you in their 
true likeness — because they have none. As well 
might I endeavour fixedly to embody into the form and 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 139 

symmetry of an Apollo, the fleeting rack, as it drives 
before the storm, and changes at each sweep of its pro- 
gress through the heavens. From my inability how- 
ever to delineate them, nothing will be lost to you. To 
detect them is easy. You will know them from their 
want of likeness ; and from their never ceasing changes, 
in their efforts to conform to the changes in the current 
of the times — or rather to the changes in public opin- 
ion. Such chameleon-shufflers consist of materials 
well fitted to be moulded into informers, traitors, and 
false witnesses against those who have imprudently 
trusted them. But to things of so much turpitude and 
repulsiveness, no more time can now be devoted. Con- 
signing them therefore to scorn and abhorrence, I must 
pass to other forms of deception. 

Hypocrisy in religion is another form of falsehood, by 
which physicians endeavour to recommend themselves ta 
public favour, and to procure business. And it will not 
be denied that the scheme is execrable. It is fraught 
with a spirit much worse than that of common duplicity* 
Implied blasphemy makes often a part of it; for it virtu- 
ally invokes a blessing from Heaven on a system of falser 
hood and a course of profanity. I have known physi- 
cians but slightly removed in their habits from profliga- 
cy, who were in the constant practice of dropping on their 
knees, and imploring divine aid in the operation of a 
remedy they were about to administer. And I have been 
called irreligious, for rebuking with sternness such re*. 
volting mockery. 

This religious juggle is played off in different ways y 
according to the end proposed to be attained by it. Usu- 
ally the aspirant to advancement enrolls himself under 
the banner of a particular sect, to secure to himself, on 



140 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

the score of brotherly love, the patronage of its members. 
Sometimes however his views are broader, and his desires 
more ambitious. He therefore resolves to stand well 
with all sects ; and conformable to this are the course he 
shapes and the means he employs. 

An eminent physician of Philadelphia held a pew in 
some place of worship of every religions sect and deno- 
mination in the city, the Jews and the Society of Friends 
excepted. Of these the former were too small a body to 
have a strong attraction for him ; and the latter not only 
rejected the overture of the hypocrite to take a seal among 
them ; they rebuked it, because they deemed it dishonest 
and offensive. 

This arch-pew-holder {who had a place even in one oj 
the African churches) if he did not, like St. Paul, make 
himself " all things to oilmen," was at least, as a secta- 
rian, every thing to every sect. He was as flexible and 
accommodating in religion, as Catiline ivas in vice. 
When in conversation with an Episcopalian, he gave 
a preference to Episcopacy — with a Presbyterian, to 
Presbylerianism — with a Methodist, to JMethodism — 
and with a Baptist, to Baptism. Nor, when in the compa- 
ny of Catholics, did he fail to find beauties and excellencies 
in their form of worship, which excited his admiration, 
and commanded his approval. Yet was that physician 
accounted pious ; and his hypocrisy procured for him 
extensive patronage. 

But a jew years ago, a wicked and repulsive specta- 
cle was exhibited, under a show of religion, within a few 
miles of this city, {Lexington in Kentucky.) Two phy- 
sicians, one of them of very loose morals and habits, and 
the other far from being a pattern of virtue, became de* 
iirous of securing, for a particular purpose, the counter 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 141 

nance and support of an influential religious sect. To 
accomplish their end, they repaired to a camp-meeting 
held in the neighbourhood, were proselyted on the same 
day, practised their orgies in the same pavillion, grew 
deeply penitent for past offences, and made pious and pub- 
lic resolves respecting future amendment — prayed fer- 
vently, raved and exhorted boisterously, and played the 
entire part of counterfeits and fanatics with such arti- 
fice and effect, as to dupe the spectators, and be accred- 
ited for sincerity. Even the clergy were persuaded that 
two sinners of note were metamorphosed into christians* 
But the delusion did not last. The project, which had 
been the cause of the feigned conversion, and of the gross 
and offensive hypocrisy which followed it, did not suc- 
ceed ; and, with its failure, failed also the masquerade 
saint-ship of the two proselytes. With appetites there- 
fore, whetted afresh by their brief abstinence, the pseudo- 
converts soon returned to the "flesh-pots " they hadforsa- 
ken, and plunged anew hit o their favourite indulgences 
— two of which iv ere, falsehood and calumny. 

One detestable stratagem more, frequently resorted to 
by physicians who are haunted by envy and jealousy, and 
I am done. It is that of calumniating rival physicians, 
by condemning and often misstating their practice. No 
act can be more deeply dishonourable, and scandalously 
base and immoral, than this. Yet it is perpetrated occa- 
sionally, even by those whom fortune has seated in the 
high places of the profession. Let the following case be 
received in illustration of my allusion, and in confirma- 
tion oj its truth. 

Two physicians of standing are rivals for business in 
the same town, but maintain with each other a friendly 
intercourse. One of them falls sick of a dangerous com- 



142 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGV OP 

plaint, and is attended by the other, who, by a bold and 
decisive practice, is acknowledged by himself to have sa- 
ved his life. In other cases also, the physician thus res- 
cued from death, testifies to the efficacy of the same mode 
of practice. For some time the relation of these two 
physicians to each other continues unchanged ; and they 
meet and consult on disease as before. 

At length a new and destructive epidemic occurs, in 
the treatment of which they are equally engaged — but 
with a dissimilar issue. The practitioner who had saved 
his rivaVs lift is far the most successful. He scarcely lo- 
ses a patient, be his condition what it may, ivhile the other 
scarcely saves one whose attack is severe. From this 
time the physician thus surpassed in practice, rendered 
jealous of his rival, conceives a deep-rooted hostility to- 
ward him, which he artfully endeavors to conceal under 
a friendly exterior. Of his mode of practice, however, 
which had eventuated so successfully, his sentiments, as 
reported by himself, undergo a sudden and complete revo- 
lution. That mode by which his life had been previously 
saved, and which he had highly commended, is noiv the 
object of his dread and dislike. He avails himself of 
every occasion presented to him, to condemn it with bit- 
terness (at first confidentially and in whispers, but after- 
wards more openly,) as being not only inefficient, as a 
means of cure, bid highly injurious to the human consti- 
tution. In this way, though comparatively unsuccessful 
in the treatment of diseases himself, he succeeds in exci- 
ting against his rival, feelings and prejudices unjust in 
themselves, and detrimental to his interests. Yet the 
form of practice, I say, thus censured and condemned, is 
that to which the epidemic referred to, and the traducer's 
own malady, had most readily yielded. Nor is it doubt- • 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 143 

ed by any one informed on the subject, that pining envy 
and unmanly jealousy, and not honest conviction, are the 
cause of the change in the calumniator's conduct. Such 
is the case 1 have ventured to state. To 'pronounce judg- 
ment on it is left for yourselves. I shall only add, that, 
though presented to you as matter of supposition, the 
leading features of it are matters of fact. 

It has been just alleged that envy and jealousy, in 
the mind of the physician discomfited in the epidemic, 
were the cause of his subsequent reprehensible conduct. 
Jlnd they are ignoble passions, which rankle only in the 
bosom of an inferior toward one above him. Their look 
is upward. A superior looks down on an inferior with 
pity or scorn ; while the inferior envies the lot of the 
superior; because he conceives it to be more eligible than 
his own. He therefore that cherishes envy, acknowledges 
by the act, a consciousness of his inferiority to him whom 
he envies. 

For the same reason all affectation is an acknowledge- 
ment of inferiority in him who practices it. No indi- 
vidual will affect to be what he is not, unless he feels 
convinced that if he were really what he personates, his 
condition would be more elevated and desirable than it 
is. Affectation moreover virtually presents a fiction for 
a reality. It is therefore founded in falsehood, and is so 
far a violation of strict morality. The physician then, 
who affects to hioiu more or do more than he actually 
does know or do, or to have made in his profession disco- 
veries or improvements, which are the fruits of the labours 
of others — such a physician is wanting in that sacred 
regard for truth, without which his morals are unsound, 
his professional reports and communications unworthy of 
credit, and his example pernicious. His reputation more- 



144 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

over, is a house on the sand, whose foundation must, soon- 
er or later, pass from under it, and leave it a ruin. 

Such, in part, is the vice of falsehood. But the pic- 
ture is incomplete. Nor does time permit me to finish 
it at present. I have shown its origin to be animal and 
degraded, and that it constitutes the foundation of a 
group of crimes and felonies, that people jails, and give 
employment to gibbets. No poison has ever been se- 
cretly administered to destroy human life, except at the 
instigation of Destructiveness, and under the direction 
of Secretiveness ; the latter of which, as already stated, 
is the source of falsehood and treachery. The debase- 
ment of the vice, then, apart from its criminality, should 
prevent its commission. 

Were it possible for me to analyze and classify all the 
crimes that have been committed by man, and enume- 
rate all the moral and physical evils that have resulted from 
them, since the origin of our race, the exposition would 
show, that, virtually, falsehood has been the source of 
the whole. Paradise was lost by falsehood and treach- 
ery ; and we are taught to believe, that from that loss 
have proceeded all the subsequent crimes and calami- 
ties of the human family. 

A world of truth would be a world of innocence, 
peace, and happiness. In such a glorious condition o 
morals, the higher and nobler faculties of our nature 
would control and regulate the subordinate ones, whose 
excess and perversion make vice and its concomitants. 
And to produce that condition of things, is the legitimate 
object of sound education. But I must pursue this 
theme no farther. A few suggestions respecting a re- 
medy for the evils of falsehood shall close my address. 

At the commencement of this branch of my subject, 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 145 

two very important questions present themselves. Does 
such a remedy exist ? And, if so, does it lie within our 
reach ; and can we apply it when attained to the reform 
contemplated ? 

To these questions my reply is affirmative. A remedy 
for falsehood does exist ; its accessibility is certain ; and 
its efficient application, though difficult, is practicable. 
Answers the reverse of these would be of fearful import. 
They would proclaim the reformation of mankind in 
mass, by means within their own power, to be impossi- 
ble, and their earthly condition hopeless. And to that 
doctrine I cannot subscribe. In my view, it would be 
disrespectful toward the Deity, if not calumnious and 
blasphemous. It would pronounce his works imperfect, 
and impeach his veracity, when he proclaimed them 
"all very good !" Boundless as he is himself in truth, 
justice and goodness, wisdom and power, I cannot be- 
lieve that he created man to be always the slave and 
victim of a lying tongue, a knavish disposition, and a 
felonious hand. If, as we are taught to believe, all 
things tend to good, a time must come, when those vices 
will have an end, and man be permitted to repose within 
his dwelling in peace, and to gather in and garner up 
the products of his industry, without being endangered 
in his person or property by the hand of the felon, or the 
devices of the knave ; or wounded in his feelings, and de- 
prived of his good name, by the tongue of the slanderer. 

In plainer and more explicit terms. So exalted is my 
opinion of the attributes of the Deity, that I cannot doubt 
the perfection of any thing he has created. I am there- 
fore compelled to be a believer in the doctrine of a mil- 
lennium to come. Though before its advent thousands 

13 



146 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OP 

of ages will have probably elapsed. And I further be- 
lieve, that that high and happy degree of reformation 
and improvement in the condition of man, is to be the 
product exclusively of his own labours. He must work 
for the felicity he is destined to enjoy, else he will nei- 
ther attain nor deserve it. He is furnished by the Crea- 
tor with the means and powers to purge himself of the 
grovelling vice of falsehood, and emerge from the igno- 
minious condition it imposes. Let those provisions be 
brought to the task with energy and judgment, and it 
will be completed. Even a steady and determined re- 
solution to employ them, is an important step toward a 
consummation so desirable. 

The first effectual act in the eradication of falsehood, 
is to denounce it in words, and discountenance it in 
practice — to proclaim against it in every shape a per- 
secution of intolerance, and a war of extermination. 
Whatever may be their wealth, or standing, or preten- 
sions, let the liar and the traitor, the shuffler, the swin- 
dler, the knave, and the thief, be openly held in the de- 
testation they merit ; be excluded from the companion- 
ship of the upright and honorable, and thrown into the 
abhorred society of each other ; or driven into solitude. 
Let the friends and patterns of virtue and good order 
shun them as lepers, or other unclean things- — except 
when they make a benevolent effort to reclaim them. 
Let them then approach them in the capacity of moral 
physicians, and act toward them accordingly. Time 
does not permit me to enter in detail on the mode of 
treating them. In addition, however, to the inculcation 
of moral precepts, and the recommendation of moral 
practices, by example as well as advice, a part of the 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 147 

curative means should be, a contrast strongly drawn, 
and earnestly presented to them, of the actual character 
and standing (with the good and the wise) of the traitor 
and the faithful, the reckless liar, and the conscientious 
friend and follower of truth — the comparative and widely 
different estimation, in which such individuals are held 
by every one, the attainment of whose esteem should be 
an object of ambition — the different fates that usually 
await them while living, the opposite feelings they ex- 
perience from a retrospect of their lives, and the un- 
speakable difference of their hopes and apprehensions. 
on the approach of death. The more effectually to en- 
force these representations, remind such of them as are 
not altogether indifferent to religion, of the dismal venge- 
ance denounced in Scripture against liars and traitors. 
And to render this argument still more impressive, no- 
thing can be better suited than a recital of the examples 
of Ananias, who was stricken dead with a lie on his lips, 
and of Judas, whose remorse for his treachery drove 
him to suicide. Nor will it be amiss to familiarize them 
with the fact, that nothing is so affront ive to a man of 
honour as to be bearded as a liar. Why ! Because 
the appellation is unequalled in the ignominy it imputes. 
But if it be degrading to an individual to be pronounced 
a liar ; to deserve the appellation is immeasurably more 
so. I need scarcely add, that these efforts at reforma- 
tion will be most likely to succeed, when they are made 
through the "riding passions" of the individuals to be 
reclaimed. Let the proud man be addressed through 
his pride, the timid through his fears, the ambitious 
through his love of distinction, the covetous through his 
love of gain, and those who have religious feelings 
through their hopes and apprehensions as to a future 



148 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

state. On this topic, however, I can dwell no longer, 
but must pass to another. 

However skillfully and vigorously the effort may be 
made, it is not by any kind of action on adults, that our 
race can be freed entirely from the turpitude of falsehood. 
Though the habits of long-practised liars and traitors 
may be amended, to reduce them to soundness is per- 
haps impossible. Their moral malady would seem to 
be incurable. After years of practice, their propensity 
to violate truth in some way, becomes almost as deeply 
and immovably rooted in their nature, as the propensity 
to breathe, sleep, or take food. Of such profligates (and 
their number is not small) it might be correctly said, in 
the words of the prophet, " Ephraim is given over to 
idols ; let him alone." 

It is through the medium of a suitable education, 
commenced in the very morning of life, that the mind 
can receive that moral soundness, mould, and bias, 
which are fatal to falsehood. Childhood is the period 
of mental flexibility, when the animal propensity, whose 
excess is lying, can be most effectually regulated. And, 
if neglected then, it too often acquires such strength 
and unbridledness, as to be afterwards irreclaimable. So 
true are the words of the poet : 

" 'Tis education forms the common mind ; 
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." 

That the " bent " therefore may be of sufficient compass, 
and in the right direction, I would follow in my advice 
somewhat the manner of an eloquent French writer, 
when urging the early inculcation of the virtue of patri- 
otism — " Begin," said he " with the child in its cradle, 
and let the first word it pronounces be Washington." 
Thus would I say : " begin with the child, as soon as 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 149 

it can understand you, and let each word it hears or 
utters, and every action it performs or witnesses, be in 
accordance with truth. Let it be taught that, in its na- 
ture, falsehood is not only sinful, but ignominious and 
dishonourable — that it is indicative of the meanest and 
basest of natures — and that to be guilty of it is to forfeit 
affection, favour, and kindness, and to excite displeasure, 
and incur punishment. And let it further learn, that an 
inviolable adherence to truth is lovely and honourable, 
and secures universal affection and good will — that it 
is the highest characteristic of pure and elevated na- 
tures — that even the Deity himself has virtually assumed 
the name of Truth, and made known, as one of his 
holiest attributes, that he will not, cannot swerve from 
it — and that inflexibly to practise truth, is the never- 
failing way to gain and preserve the esteem and confi- 
dence of the virtuous and enlightened ; and, as the 
highest of earthly rewards, to enjoy the gratification of 
self-esteem, in union with the approbation of a peaceful 
conscience. These views to be imparted successively, 
as the mind of the instructed becomes capable of com- 
prehending them. 

Moral education then is that form of discipline which 
can alone preserve the mind from all that is base and 
odious in falsehood. And, contrary to general belief 
and custom, it can be efficiently promoted only by prac- 
tice and example ; not by the cultivation of the intellec- 
tual faculties. Mere moral precepts, whether oral or 
written, do comparatively but little to confirm the pupil 
in habits of virtue. They may give him knovjledge, but 
nothing more. And that, as daily experience evinces, 
has no necessary affinity to moral duty, nor any positive 
control of it. A single day of moral practice imparts 
13* 



150 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

more strength and activity to the moral faculties, than a 
month or even a year of reading, and listening to ha- 
rangues recommendatory of morality. 

To these remarks, however, exceptions may exist. 
On youthful minds of an ardent temperament and a lofty 
ambition,, the mere contemplation of examples pure in 
sentiment and sublime in their moral bearing, especially 
if associated with deeds of greatness and glory, produces 
at times very salutary effects. To the native seeds of 
morality, sown in the constitution of those who come 
under their influence, they are sunshine and dew. 
Their genial agency awakens the germ, and future events 
give nourishment and growth, and bring the fruit to 
ripeness. Hence the benefits that result from the biog- 
raphical memoirs of distinguished men. There is reason 
to believe that such productions have done much more 
in the promotion of sound morals and practical virtue, 
than all the didactic discourses, essays, and systems of 
moral philosophy, that have issued from the pen and the 
press* since the origin of letters. Plutarch has done 
more for morals, by his lives of the great, than all the 
sages of Greece by their writings ; and the authors of 
the lives of distinguished Romans, more than the moral 
writers of Rome. Nor is it doubtful that the biogra- 
phies of Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, and other 
illustrious Americans, composed in a manner worthy 
of their subjects, might be so used as to be made the 
means of greater amendment in the morals of our coun- 
try, than all the editions of Paley, Smith and Beattie, 
Stewart and Brown, and all the other disquisitions on 
morals* that have ever been published. 

But it is not by the exertion and influence of a few 
agents in the cause of truth and morality*, however 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 151 

strenuous and powerful they may be, that mendacity 
and its concomitant evils can be suppressed. For 
the completion of a work of such magnitude and diffi- 
culty, the labourers must be numerous, true to their 
vocation, ardent in their zeal, and untiring in their per- 
severance, else their efforts will be unavailing. Nothing 
short, I say, of a sound moral education diffused 
throughout the land can accomplish the object. And to 
that caste of education, in its true character and entire 
extent, we are hitherto strangers. Its very beginning 
among us is yet to be made, and its real value yet to 
be learnt. In this assertion, exceptionable as it may 
perhaps be thought, there is neither error nor extrava- 
gance. I fearlessly repeat, that, lofty as are our pre- 
tensions to knowledge, morality and religion, the value 
and sacredness of truth, and the turpitude of falsehood 
are either misunderstood, or shamefully disregarded by 
us. Were the fact otherwise, so would be the issue. 
In all parts of our country, and under all circumstances, 
truth would be held in higher estimation and honour, 
and falsehood in deeper disgrace and odium, than is 
now the case. In a special manner, those notoriously 
addicted to the latter, in some of its most repulsive 
shapes, would never be received into public favour, 
caressed and sustained in their movements and meas- 
ures, and hailed under the prostituted title of benefac- 
tors and friends, in any cause deemed upright and 
praiseworthy. Yet, in whatever direction you throw 
your eyes over our country, you will find such scenes 
of prostitution abundant. 

But the moment warns me that I must hasten to a 
close. Not however until I shall have briefly indicated 
to you the only source of that improvement in moral 



^ 



152 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

education, which can convert the love of truth and the 
detestation of falsehood, into the " ruling passion " of 
the whole community. It is family discipline, con- 
ducted under the guidance of solid judgment, correct 
knowledge, inflexible resolution and perseverance, and 
sound conscience, and brought to the perfection of 
which it is susceptible. 

That truth may attain the ascendency it deserves, 
and falsehood be held in due abhorrence, every family 
must be converted into a school of morals, where the 
former will be practically taught and encouraged, and 
the latter, in all its modifications, discountenanced. 

And mothers must be the teachers. Nor will the 
occupation be found either impracticable or burthen- 
some to them. On the contrary, it will be a source 
of the purest and most elevated enjoyment. It will 
only impose on them the 

" Delightful task ! to rear the tender thought. 
To teach the young idea how to shoot, 
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, 
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix 
The generous purpose in the glowing breast." 
And who that deserves the name of mother, or even 
of ivoman, would not eagerly and joyously embark in 
the employment ! 

That mothers however may be fitted for a vocation so 
elevated and responsible, and prepared to discharge the 
duties of it with credit and usefulness, they must be 
suitably trained and disciplined themselves. And I la- 
ment to say, that in the present state of society, this is 
far from being generally the case. The systems of fe- 
male education now in vogue, (if " systems " they can 
be called,) are miserably defective, and can never fit 
mothers for an office at once so sacred and important* 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 153 

They qualify them much better to glitter, sport, and 
dazzle abroad, than to officiate in their consecrated pro- 
vinces at home. 

Female education, as now conducted, is deplorably 
superficial. It addresses itself far more to the eye and 
the ear, than to the understanding and the conscience. 
To play on the piano and the harp, to touch the guitar, 
to paint, dance, embroider, and dress with taste, are de- 
sirable and delightful, as accomplishments of the fair. 
But they are only accomplishments. They are the 
mere " trappings and suits " of female education, and 
should be regarded but as decorations of something 
" within which passeth show," and is of higher value. 
And that something is wealth of intellect, delicacy of 
feeling, refinement of sentiment, purity of morals, an 
undeviating adherence to truth, and a sincere regard for 
the duties of a religion, free from moroseness, bigotry, 
and superstition. For, however regardless they may 
be of such duties themselves, there are few men of in- 
tellect and standing, who do not recoil from the specta- 
cle of an irreligious woman. If her infidelity be openly 
avowed, she is so far unsexed, and marred in her fitness 
for the sphere she should occupy. It is to woman we 
instinctively look for the ornament, charm, and solace 
of home — for all that is most hallowed, as well as most 
lovely in the domestic circle, and most attractive and re- 
spected in the social. But, if she be not spotless in 
her morals, refined in her taste, graceful in her manners, 
and pious in her sentiments, we look in vain, and feel 
the chill of disappointment, and the sting of regret, in- 
stead of the thrill of admiration, and the glow of de- 
light. She neither fills up the measure of our expecta- 
tion, satisfies our wishes, nor realizes our hopes. But, 



154 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF 

when her character and virtues are suited to her sex, 
she is at once our most valuable exemplar and instruct- 
ress in truth and fidelity, purity and fortitude, friendship 
and love. In all that is most attractive and estimable 
she towers above us, as a being of a superior nature, 
destined to a higher sphere, and leaves us in our inglo- 
rious caste of inferiority, the creatures of earth. 

We hear occasionally of the constancy of man, as 
an unlooked-for event. But we witness as an every- 
day occurrence, the fidelity, truth, and devotedness of 
woman. We read, among the ornaments of epic song, 
of the friendships of Pylades and Orestes, Achilles and 
Patroclus, Nisus and Euryalus ; and in ancient romance 
of that of Damon and Pythias, and a few others, be- 
tween men. And we bestow on them an ample meas- 
ure of admiration and applause. Yet what are they but 
heartless professions, compared to the manifestations re- 
corded of woman — to the unfathomable attachment 
for example, of Kaled (a young female in the attire of 
a page) to Lara his Lord, as immortalized by Byron. 
The scene is laid at night, and the moment is that in 
which the chief is about to lead the charge to his last 
conflict. And the following are the lines, that will 
perpetuate to all ages, the truth and faithfulness of a 
female friend : 

"Perhaps 'twas but the moon's dim twilight threw 
Along his (Kaled's) aspect an unwonted hue 
Of mournful paleness, whose deep tint expressed 
The truth, and not the terror of his breast. 
This Lara marked, and laid his hand on his ; 
It trembled not in such an hour as this ; 
His lip was silent, scarcely beat his heart ; 
His eye alone proclaimed, we will not part ! 



FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES. 155 

Thy band may perish, and thy friends may flee, 
Farewell to life, but not adieu to thee !" 

And fearfully did the issue verify the fatal resolve of the 
eye. The leader fell, and the page was maddened and 
desrtoyed by the agonies of grief. 

Or what were those male friendships, contrasted with 
the fidelity of Emma to Henry, as celebrated by Pryor : 

" Thy rise of fortune only did I wed, 
From its decline determined to recede ; 
Did I but purpose to embark with thee 
On the smooth surface of a summer sea, 
When gentle zephyrs play in prosperous gales, 
And Fortune's favour fills the swelling sails ; 
But would forsake the ship and make the shore, 
When the winds whistle and the tempests roar ? 
No, Henry, no ; one sacred oath has tied 
Our loves ; one destiny our lives shall guide ; 
Nor wild, nor deep our common way divide !" 

These splendid examples of truth and faithfulness in 
woman are among the redeeming lights of the world, 
and, to the heart of sensibility, beggar the much boasted 
glories of man. There dwell in them a moral sublimi- 
ty, power, and beauty, which render them impressive 
and attractive, far beyond what philosophers have achie- 
ved in the halls of science ; historians and poets in the 
temples of the muses ; orators on the rostrum ; or he- 
roes in the field. Hence when a Shakspeare, a Scott, 
or a Byron, resolves most deeply to fascinate and en- 
thrall the minds of his readers, he presents them with a 
picture of female devotedness, constancy, and good 
faith. Were it possible, moreover, for the reprobate 
votaries of falsehood and intrigue, to become instinct 
with the feelings of honourable men, such examples 
would either reclaim them from profligacy, crush them 



to 



156 THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY 

under a sense of their own degradation and unworthi- 
ness, or madden them with remorse. And I repeat, 
that, if this world of deception and treachery is ever to 
become a world of fidelity and truth, the conversion will 
be, in a high degree, the work of educated woman, in 
the faithful discharge of her maternal duties. 

This, gentlemen, as heretofore suggested, is the last 
time I shall ever address you — a consideration which, 
on my part, gives to the occasion unusual solemnity. 
Accept therefore, I entreat you, as my official death-bed 
discourse, the sentiments I have uttered. And consider 
them as consecrated by the sincerity and affection of a 
father to his sons, at the trying hour of their final sepa- 
ration. 

Though but few of you rank as heads of families 
now, it is my earnest hope that you will all live to do so 
hereafter. When in that justly honoured and responsi- 
ble capacity then, let me further hope, that you will not 
be unmindful of some of the thoughts that have been 
expressed to you this day. In that case, you may not 
have listened, nor I spoken, altogether in vain* And, 
at whatever period the event just referred to may occur, 
let truth and fidelity be the inmates of your dwellings, 
and your companions without ; and peace, respectability, 
and honour will not fail to acompany them. Nor will 
falsehood and treachery, whensoever, wheresoever, or 
by whomsoever practised, escape in the end, exposure 
and reprobation, disaster and disgrace. 

Cordially welcoming you to the professional rank 
which you have this day attained, and tendering to you, in 
behalf of the Faculty of Medicine, and the government 
of the University, the affectionate benediction of your 
Alma Mater, I bid you farewell ! 



